It's unfortunate that the City of Butler will be receiving about $60,000 less in federal community development block grant money this year than what was received in 2005. The city could put to good use much more than the $412,172 it will be receiving this year.

But the full impact of the federal cutback would not have to be felt if the Butler Redevelopment Authority scaled back the amount of money it intends to allocate for administrative costs associated with the federal grant.

Just because the authority is authorized to allocate 18 percent of the total grant for administrative expenses doesn't necessarily mean that the authority couldn't find a way to administer the grant for much less.

Doing that would enable some of the money currently targeted for administration to be used for a specific project or projects.

Between now and a second public hearing on the grant scheduled for Feb. 23, the city council should work with Perry O'Malley, authority executive director, to scale down the administrative money.

Meanwhile, it is troubling that the city must use $50,000 of the community development grant to pay for the salary and benefits of the city's code enforcement officer, depriving worthy projects of that money. The salary and benefits in question should be paid out of the city's general fund budget.

Other proposed uses of the grant funds seem reasonable — $140,000 for street and road improvements, $100,000 for Penn Theater restoration, $10,000 for recreation, $20,000 for public-community facilities, $17,982 for acquisition of blighted properties, and $50,000 for blighted-property removal.

The community development program requires 70 percent of the money to be used for projects that directly benefit low- to moderate-income residents. It would seem that the project proposals presented by the authority to the council would comply with that requirement.

Still, this city shouldn't have to spend $74,190 — 18 percent of the total grant — to spend the remaining $337,982. This city neither has nor needs the kind of bloated bureacracy requiring such a lopsided allocation.

No more than 8 or 10 percent should be needed for administrative expenses.