Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
05-14-09 – 8:30 a.m. - While municipalities were urged to sprint to the state and federal governments with project ideas for the federal stimulus funding, there has been no rush to disburse those funds.
Two months after local officials submitted applications for federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding, there has been no word from the state, which will disburse those funds, on the status of the multitude of applications filed from Columbia County and its municipalities.
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"We haven't heard anything. It's been quiet," Hudson Mayor Richard Scalera said last Wednesday, days after Capital Region officials heralded the start of the first stimulus-funded project in the region—a $14.9 million project to repave and refurbish 1.6 miles of Delaware Avenue in Albany. The Albany project was one of several projects around the state announced by Governor David Paterson that will receive more than $100 million in federal stimulus funds.
The lack of word at has forced the City of Hudson to start work on critical problem in the city—keeping a working water main functional on Green Street.
"We had to get going on it," Scalera said. "We contacted [the state] to see if we could get going and still be eligible for the funds . . . . The answer was yes."
Department of Public Works Superintendent Robert Perry, Jr., though, said funding for the project is not likely. In fact, he said, Hudson officials didn’t complete a step critical to receiving funding—filling out an application with the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC).
“We put it on the wish list the political officials asked us for . . . but we didn’t know we had to go through the EFC process. It wasn’t until later that the state said they were going to look at the [EFC] list” to determine eligibility and who would receive the funds, Perry told ccSCOOP.
He also said the water main project, which was submitted on the wish list to the City’s federal and state representatives with an estimated $375,000 cost, may actually come in at a much lower cost—about $250,000.
Meanwhile, the primary wish for federal stimulus funding remains the state-mandated $9 million project to replace the City's forty-year-old waste water treatment plant. Perry and Scalera both reported that comments from EFC and other officials continue to indicate that the city will receive funds for the project—whether it is forgiveness of debt or more than the standard 50 percent in aid granted to similar projects.
Municipalities across the county hope to receive stimulus funds for a variety of projects—from replacing a railroad bridge in Chatham to constructing a new town hall in Stockport.
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