Stimulus Road Money Submittal

With all this talk about transparency about the ARRA (stimulus money act), I thought I would do may part to make our participation as transparent as possible. So here is the low-down on our road money status:

Last Mon., March 9, 2009, the city council approved using the stimulus money allocated to the city of LaSalle to repair the following road sections:

Creve Coeur: Third to Eighth
First street at Crosat (intersection only)
Third: LaHarpe to Sterling
Eighth: Joliet to Crosat
Edwards: 2 Blocks west of St. Vincent to St. Vincent
Crosat: O'conor to Grant

And in an effort to be even more transparent, here is a link to the document the city was required to submit to IDOT to secure the funding: ARRA TIP sheet

(Note: the amount shown is based on an estimate only - the final cost may be more or less depending on the final design and construction costs. Also, this document is not yet approved; only submitted)

City of LaSalle Progress Update

Normally the city presents an update of progress in the city at the end of each year. But in December of 2008 we were so busy trying to deal with flood-related issues and submittals of stimulus project information that we were prevented from being able to find the time to create this presentation.

Each Spring, the mayor also provides this update to Rotary so we finally made time to put it all together, and Mayor Washkowiak delivered the speech this week at a regular Rotary meeting. This year we also have a free account at http://www.slideshare.net/cityoflasalle where we can save the presentation for all to see.

But even better, here is a copy of it for you to view:

City of LaSalle 2008 Annual Report

View more presentations from cityoflasalle.

Stimulus Package Update

Over the last few months, we have tried to keep track of what was happening with the stimulus package so that we can maximize our chance to get money for our city. So far it looks like IDOT has released a document indicating we will share roughly $700,000 with Peru and Oglesby. We expect that this amount will be split between the cities based on population.

This road money can only be spent on certain roads though because of the way the legislators wrote the bill. We can also spend it on replacing road signs which I realize no one is very excited about doing. But unfortunately our legislators also passed a law that we have to do this one way or another, so no matter what we must replace signs. If we don't use stimulus money for this, we will have to take it out of the regular city funds.

As for water and wastewater, we have attended the IEPA's webinar on how to go about submitting the projects for funding. The funding process here is a little more complicated. The state will give cities up to a total of $10 million for wastewater and $5 for water. However, the award will be based on readiness and availability of funds and the submittal and approval of all the related EPA paperwork. And the state will only fund up to half the project cost with half of that being considered a grant and half being a no-interest loan. The state will also offer the city a no-interest loan for the other half of the project. So the bottom line is:

If we submit a project for $1,000,000, we will get:
$250,000 of grant money we don't have to pay back
$750,000 of loan money that is paid back over 20 years with no interest

Like anything involving federal funds, there is attached an enormous amount of work for us to do to make sure we can secure the funding that has little to do with the plans and specifications. We are working on it and trying to get everything in on time. If you have any questions or want to discuss this at all, please feel free to stop in or post a comment.