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| County seeks stimulus funds |
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| News | |||
| Written by Robin Hixson | |||
| Wednesday, 28 January 2009 09:00 | |||
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Miami County has jumped aboard the state’s transportation proposal — part of an economic stimulus bill to go before Congress — in hopes of getting a piece of the pie. Two days after a Jan. 21 meeting in which the county commission balked at releasing federal funds earmarked for its Bull Creek bridge renovation project in order to take a chance for funding it through a federal stimulus bill not yet passed, commission Chairman pro-tem Lyle Wobker called a meeting Friday which ended with a 4-0 vote to do exactly that. Chairman Jim Wise was out of town and unable to attend. One of the factors that changed their minds was written assurance from Kansas Department of Transportation representative Ron Seitz, via e-mail, that the federal funds the county must release to participate in the KDOT economic stimulus proposal would still be available to the county for a later project. “The county would be assuming some risk in taking this approach to the project. On the other hand, you will have the opportunity to gain a ‘windfall’ in that the five-year plan funds deobligated from this project will remain with the county. You can use them to develop another project,” Seitz wrote. At this time, however, there has been no absolute written assurance from KDOT that the original federal funding will be reapplied to the Bull Creek bridge project if the stimulus bill doesn’t come through. In an e-mail sent to Evans, Seitz said he believes the target date for the stimulus bill to come before President Barack Obama for signature is Feb. 16. “Obviously, we cannot guarantee this date because the bill has to go through debate and approval (hopefully} by both houses of Congress,” he wrote. Seitz also said the Federal Highway Administration indicated that, if the bill passes Congress and receives the president’s approval, the money will be available to the states within two weeks of that approval. That means Miami County could receive 100-percent funding of its $1.2 million Bull Creek bridge project by early March. Evans said the project, which will begin about April 15, will not incur actual construction costs until that time. “As Ron explained, we may bear some up-front costs like preliminary inspection preparation costs (less than $10,000),” Evans wrote to Miami County Administrator Shane Krull in a Thursday e-mail. During the meeting Friday, several county officials said they heard or read news reports that neighboring Johnson County had already agreed to participate. Evans said KDOT expects to receive about $300 million if the economic stimulus package goes through, and it plans to share a percentage of those funds with participating local (including county) entities. Because so few counties meet the criteria of having federal-aid eligible project that are ready to let, Miami County also has a good chance to receive economic stimulus funding for other projects in the near future. In addition, she said, if the stimulus package comes through, the original federal funding deobligated for the Bull Creek bridge project will very possibly be used to fund two other Miami County road or bridge projects. “We’ll be able to roll it over to other projects,” she said, adding that one of those could be a project she has been putting together for a bridge replacement on Osawatomie Road.
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