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on the bond policy. She said that all of the money from the 1997 Housing Bond Program has been expended, but it did not happen until April 2005. There was an obligation of $350,000 far Orange Community Housing and Land Trust for Meadowmont that they ended up not needing. So the Board agreed to transfer that $352,500 over to add to the land banking of $260,000, which gave them approximately $600,000 available for land banking. Also, the 2001 Housing Band funds have been expended except for the Sykes Street Project for $60,000. Also, there is $300,000 set aside for Affordable Rentals. This is supposed to be expended before the end of the fiscal year. She made reference to the Land Banking Program and said that they received two proposals -one from Habitat for Humanity and one from EmPOWERment, Inc. They spent $336,000 of the $612,000 that was available. They received another request yesterday from Habitat for $116,000 from land banking far a project in Fairview. There is now $256,257 remaining for the Land Banking Project, in addition to the $2.7 million that has not been obligated from 2001 Housing Bonds. She made reference to the draft page and said that they are proposing that they have an open application process instead of a specified request for proposals process. In other words, the money would be available until it is gone. The AHAB discussed the pros and cons and the main advantage is that the money would always be available. Regarding the disadvantages, they discussed that if they had an open application then they might end up with one kind of requests such as all land banking, special needs, etc. Also, with this type of application process, they may get more applications than they have funds for and if this happened, it would be hard to prioritize. Chair Jacobs said that land values will go up when they put in infrastructure and they can land bank properties near these proposed areas. On May 4t" they will be voting on the water and sewer to ga to the middle school in Efland in the Economic Development District. This may be a good place to put density. He said that they might want to beef up the capability of targeting their awn land far where they want to have affordable housing. Gwen Harvey asked if this means that the County would use the land banking reserve as opposed to a developer or nonprofit. Chair Jacobs said yes and that staff and same nonprofits could get together and talk about the best places with the idea that someone will build the housing there. Commissioner Carey said that with the open application process he has concerns because it is hard to determine if the applications would be consistent with the County's vision. He said that someone will always have more information than other groups and that may put some at a disadvantage. He said that this proposal may put money in projects that are not consistent with the County's highest priority needs. Commissioner Halkiotis echoed what Chair Jacobs said and said that no one in this room, except for staff and the County Commissioners, knows what it took in time, effort, and money to get the water and sewer to the new middle school in Efland. There have been countless meetings and the paperwork has been unbelievable. He said that not to take advantage of the fact that there is going to be water and sewer out there would be stupid. Chair Jacobs said that there is also an EflandlMebane Small Area Planning Group that is almost done with its work and the second phase of the water and sewer project will be coming to Efland. There will be additional opportunities in Efland and also near the Petro Marton I-85. Commissioner Carey said that he does not mind saying no to a proposal that is not consistent with the County's priorities, but sometimes people do not understand "no" if there is no other project on the horizon and they think theirs is the best one in town. This is one of the dawn sides of the open process. Commissioner Gordon asked about the process now and how often they meet to select projects. Tara Fikes said that they have not been accepting applications far anything other than land banking projects since 2002. They do have an open application process for land banking.