BREMERTON—Two Bremerton City Council members known for their demonstrative clashes with each other found some common ground at a recent council study session.

Dino Davis and Roy Runyon sided with each other in regard to the city’s spending of 2016-2020 grant money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Both were upset that their districts weren’t going to see much of the $390,000 Community Development Block Grant.

Most of that money will instead be spent in areas Evergreen Rotary Park and Harborside Fountain Park and the boardwalk and Chester Avenue.

“I thought part of the discussion was to really pump up our economic development and I didn’t think that meant more parks and capital projects,” Runyon said.

Davis echoed Runyon.

“I see a beautiful new movie theater in the blighted area, beautiful new apartments being built on top of that, tons of economic growth happening on that one street,” Davis said. “But to see another round of focusing on that same area where we’ve already concentrated on — I’m gonna take flak, everyone at this table’s gonna take flak because again the perception is that all the money goes to downtown.”

About $214,000 for capital projects will be spent improving Evergreen Rotary Park and Harborside Fountain Park.

Parks and Recreation Director Wyn Birkenthal said much of that could easily be spent upgrading the infrastructure at Harborside. He said similar fountains are can be controlled remotely via smartphone, but Harborside still requires manual operation. The upgrades would cost at least $100,000, he said.

Ten percent, or $39,000, will go toward revitalizing slum and blight areas between Burwell Street and Sixth Street and Washington Avenue and Chester Avenue. Vacant buildings or commercial spaces with code violations are eligible to receive money to help bring them up to code.

The hope of many on the council is that improving downtown will benefit Bremerton as a whole.

“Downtown Bremerton is at the tipping point of really starting to go and achieve something and I really believe we’re going to get spillover from Seattle and they’re going downtown,” said Councilman Eric Younger. “I see a spillover effect into the rest of Bremerton. As this becomes more desirable they’re going to go into the other communities.”

Another $58,500, or 15 percent, will be spent on citywide economic development. This will come in the form of seed money for startups and mentorship for entrepreneurs.

The remaining $78,000 will be spent on planning and administration.