ORANGE — The town is using grant money to task the Franklin Regional Council of Governments with conducting a slum and blight inventory to determine if Orange qualifies for Community Development Block Grant funding for infrastructure upgrades and other improvements.

Housing and Livability Program Manager Megan Rhodes virtually attended Wednesday’s Selectboard meeting to explain how the organization will conduct a slum and blight inventory for the Mechanic Street neighborhood. She mentioned the same service was administered in a different Orange neighborhood in roughly 2010 and this time, employees will assess 280 parcels — including all structures, roads, sidewalks, and water and sewer lines — north of East Main Street.

“‘Slum and blighted’ [is] not a great term ... that is a federal designation. We wish the name would change. But with that designation, the area then becomes eligible to use CDBG funding … for infrastructure upgrades and other improvements in the area,” she said. “Once we do [the inventory] we’re going to then compile all the results and if the area meets the official designation — the criteria of a ‘slum and blighted area’ — we will ask the board to designate that area officially as ‘slum and blighted.’ And then the state will approve that designation and make you eligible for sewer, water, infrastructure upgrades in that area.”

Rhodes said FRCOG is waiting for all the snow to melt, then employees will walk the neighborhood’s streets, staying on public property and rights-of-way to assess buildings. The inventory is expected to be completed by the spring or summer, after which time FRCOG will compile a report for the Selectboard.

“We will not be going onto any private property,” she clarified, adding that FRCOG employees will wear high-visibility vests and have identification on them.

Rhodes also said FRCOG will hire an engineer to work directly with the town to address sewer and water line conditions.

“We hope to have the report wrapped up by November and we’ll bring it back to you guys, probably late November, early December, to make that designation,” she said. “To be designated as ‘slum and blighted,’ 25% of the properties have to … be in a state of physical deterioration or 25% have to be abandoned, experience chronic high occupancy turnover rates, have significant declines in property values or have no known or suspected environmental contamination. You have to have at least one of those categories met.”

Elsewhere in Franklin County, Greenfield’s Central Commercial District is designated as a “Slum and Blight” community under the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, the city’s Economic and Community Development Director Amy Cahillane said previously. FRCOG also conducted a study of Turners Falls’ Historic-Industrial District in 2014 that deemed it to be a “Slum and Blight” area.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.