CUMBERLAND — Due to staffing limits, city officials said they will end a relocation incentive program that drew well more than 1,000 applicants from across the U.S. but ultimately awarded only four of 10 grants.
The city nearly two years ago started the Choose Cumberland program, which offered a limited-time relocation incentive of $10,000 to folks who move to Cumberland and an additional $10,000 match for approved renovations to an existing home or for a downpayment on a newly constructed house within city limits.
“We’ve kind of closed the program because of the strain on administrative staff to try to keep up with this (and) get the (real estate transaction) closings,” Cumberland Administrator Jeff Silka said Wednesday.
Cumberland officials said they created the program to increase economic opportunity, grow the area’s “talented workforce” and improve housing in the city.
“What happened was, when we came up with it, remote work was surging, the federal government was surging, so we wanted to take on that wave,” Silka said of the program that launched in late August 2024.
“And then right after we got the program installed, the federal government … went back to office orders and now corporate America is kind of following the same suit … so we’ve kind of lost our draw,” he said.
Silka spoke of difficulty the city encountered to handle hundreds of applications for the program.
“It’s a very cumbersome process … especially whenever it blew up in the media,” he said.
Silka plans to ask the state granting agency, which provided funds for the program, if the city can reallocate its remaining Choose Cumberland money to other programs.
“We did attract people,” he said.
Cumberland Mayor Ray Morriss said the program was successful.
“Overall I think it worked well even though we didn’t necessarily give out all the grant money,” he said.
Many applicants were excited when they started the process, but would later “get cold feet,” Councilman Rock Cioni said. He served on a committee to review the applications shortly after the program began. “It was worth a try.”
Background
City officials promoted the plan as a program for people who live outside Allegany County, work remotely or would relocate to Cumberland for a new job.
Less than a week after the program started, Ruth Davis-Rogers, the city’s former historic preservation planner, said she had gotten hundreds of applications.
“We are receiving on average probably 20 to 30 applications per hour, in addition to phone calls … even in the middle of the night,” she said at that time. “I can’t even keep up with them … my computer actually shut down.”
Applications came from states including California, Oklahoma, Arizona and North Carolina.
In October 2024, Silka said interest in the program was a “colossal success.”
Soon after, city officials said they had reserved four of the 10 openings for the relocation incentive package.
“Prior to us officially releasing the program, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services asked if they could use this program as a recruiting tool to attract new employees living outside of Allegany County,” Silka said at that time. The department manages the Western Correctional and North Branch Correctional institutions, which are maximum security state prisons in Cresaptown.
“We said yes and told them we would reserve four positions for them. Currently they have not submitted any names of new hires to us to take advantage of this program,” he said at that time.