By Joseph S. Pete, Daily Journal of Johnson County staff writer
Federal stimulus money likely won't do much to stimulate the economy or pay for long-planned projects in Greenwood, such as a third Interstate 65 interchange, Greenwood Mayor Charles Henderson said.
Henderson and other mayors are frustrated with how the stimulus money is being divvied out.
Greenwood city employees have spent dozens of hours trying to pursue stimulus money, but the rules have frequently changed and it no longer appears as though many of Greenwood's projects will get due consideration, he said.
He's been told that no Indiana municipality will get more than $3 million for infrastructure projects. Central Indiana communities have requested $274 million in roadwork and other infrastructure projects, but Henderson has been told that only $39 million will be spent.
"They're going to nickel and dime this money out and not any of us are going to see any stimulus out of it," he said. "They're going to piecemeal that. But every week it changes and I don't know what's going to happen. But it's not as rosy a picture as it was painted when we started."
City officials were originally told to present projects that they could have shovel-ready within five or six months, but are now being told that the projects have to be shovel-ready before they're even submitted to the state.
The problem is that smaller cities don't have such projects lined up because they can't afford to spend tax dollars to design projects, buy land and do environmental studies if no funding is in place, Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis said.
The only Greenwood project that might end up getting stimulus money is a sewer project planned along State Road 37, Henderson said. In that case, Greenwood has already paid for preliminary engineering work for a project that would open up the entire State Road 37 corridor to commercial development.
"I'm extremely upset with the whole process of stimulus money," he said. "I don't think it's fair to any of us."
Greenwood still has a chance of getting other projects funded, such as the Worthsville Road expansion and the Worthsville Road interchange, through the federal highway bill that's renewed every few years and will come up later this year, Henderson said.
While recently at a conference at Washington D.C., he and a lobbyist the city hired for $5,000 a month asked all three congressmen representing Johnson County to support various infrastructure projects planned for Greenwood, including the interchange.
Greenwood will have to appeal to get the funds later, such as when the highway bill comes up for consideration, because it doesn't look like the city has a good chance of getting a share of the stimulus funds, Henderson said.
"The traffic money, the highway money part-they're restricting that thing so tight," Henderson said. "You not only have to have your plans totally done and approved, your environmental studies done and your right-of-way purchased. I don't know who qualifies for that, and it's very frustrating."
Henderson said he's been to at least four different meetings with state officials and hears different requirements for getting stimulus money each time.
At first, the state planned to have committees headed up by the lieutenant governor and the economic development corporations figure out how to distribute the federal stimulus money, Henderson said. But now the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization is deciding how to spend the stimulus money.
"If you're not already on the list, forget it, they tell us," Henderson said. "Well, we've put in for a few projects on the list, but they've refused to accept those because there wasn't the funding and now we're not on the list. We said that's not fair and we're appealing that because we asked to put those on the list."
State officials have been dealing with changing requirements from the federal government, which has complicated the process of distributing the stimulus funds for road projects, Indiana Economic Development Corp. spokeswoman Blair West said.
The federal government wanted to distribute the stimulus money through existing channels rather than create a new bureaucracy to pass out the funds, said Ellis, who recently met with vice president Joe Biden at the White House. But that puts smaller cities at a disadvantage since they typically don't pursue preliminary work on projects that they don't have funding lined up for, Ellis said.
"There's a definite question of what's going to flow to cities and local communities," he said. "There's a widespread frustration among mayors and cities."