AUBURN — It may be time to change the way the city spends federal block grant money, according to the mayor.

“The downtown is poor now,” Mayor Jonathan LaBonte said. “If we are going to create a new plan to help that, and what we have been doing hasn’t worked, why don’t we think of a different way to do it?”

City councilors are scheduled Monday to review how the city decides how to spend money it gets from the federal Community Development Block Grant program.

“We go through these planning process discussions every few years, but we pretty much always keep the same programs in place,” LaBonte said. “I think we just change the number of buildings we want to rehab. I actually think we should eliminate all the programs and start from zero.”

The discussion is part of Monday’s council workshop. It’s scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. in Auburn Hall.

Auburn receives federal CDBG money to pay for economic development projects in the city’s most impoverished areas — parts of New Auburn, Union Street and residential areas downtown.

That money can be used to pay for housing improvements, for work on public facilities such as parks and sidewalks in the target areas, and to promote economic development.

The city unveiled a new program last year designed to help property owners pay for exterior renovations for their buildings.

The federal program requires cities getting the money to come up with a plan every five years that explains how they will involve the public in that spending. The plan will allow LaBonte to name three residents to the Citizens Advisory Committee.

“But it appears to me to be the same model,” he said.

LaBonte thinks the city can do more.

“We ought to be looking to have strong representation and interest from the neighborhoods at the table for all of these discussions,” LaBonte said. “Groups like this stay on and become the foundation of a neighborhood group. Why not have a resident, an apartment building owner or a small business owner in that neighborhood on that advisory group? They have a vested stake in what happens already.”

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