Slippery Rock Township might be looking at some new options other than roadwork for some of its state money.

The township receives money each year for qualifying for the state's Community Development Block Grant Entitlement Program, which encourages improvements that both help low-to-moderate income residents and make the community nicer.

Rick Grossman, a consultant for the township, said, in recent years, the money has focused on road projects that would affect those in low-to-moderate income neighborhoods.

“We're running out of road reconstruction projects,” Grossman said. “So, we're just looking at some new projects.”

Grossman said the amount of the grant varies year to year, but he said it usually hovers near $100,000.

Grossman presented a few new options to the supervisors at Monday's meeting, including some projects that could be done together.

Two of the options were familiar to the township supervisors, a housing rehabilitation program and slum blight eradication.

“In the past, the township did a housing rehabilitation program where they used those funds to do home repairs to bring houses owned by people in either low or moderate income to bring their house up to code,” he said. “That was done a very long time ago.”

Grossman said grant requirements stipulate the latter option can only be 30 percent of the grant money per year, which would mean the township would have to tackle two projects at once.

But he said the need is present, especially near Slippery Rock Creek, where there are a lot of abandoned fishing shacks.

Under the program, the grant money would cover cost of the township demolishing an abandoned building. The building must be unoccupied for 12 months or more for the township to have the right to tear it down.

“We've got some that have been abandoned much longer than that,” Grossman said. “Some of them are probably pretty dangerous to walk into.”

Grossman said anything added to the plan wouldn't be worked on until after next year at the earliest.

“These are some of the things we've discussed,” he said. “These are all sort of in the planning stage.”

The supervisors agreed at Monday's meeting to continue discussing the future of the grant funds at the Oct. 1 meeting.