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Local officials prepare for stimulus despite lack of info

Lauri Clifton, comptroller of the Janesville School District, attended a conference session to learn about the federal stimulus plan last week.

She didn’t find it enlightening.

“We have an awful lot of maybes and ifs, but nothing quite concrete,” she said.

Municipal leaders all over Wisconsin feel her confusion. It’s been six weeks since the federal government passed a $787 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but city, school and county officials still know little about how much money they’ll be getting and what they can do with it.

Many channels

The money will flow through more than 130 federal and state programs, according to the Wisconsin Office of Recovery and Reinvestment. The state expects to distribute about $3.8 billion through more than 30 programs.

Some programs will require grant applications, while others will distribute money automatically to communities. Some offer a combination of both.

For example, the city of Janesville automatically will get more than $600,000 in energy efficiency and conservation grants. Smaller Rock County communities and the county government weren’t eligible for the automatic grants, but at some point they will be able to apply for competitive grants through the state and federal government, said Josh Smith, assistant to the Rock County administrator.

“It just compounds how complex it is that you have to plug into all these different sources,” Smith said.

Don’t want to miss something

Local officials said they’re working hard to stay abreast of developments and prepare their communities to take advantage of every opportunity.

Edgerton Administrator Ramona Flanigan said she spends about an hour a day keeping up with stimulus news.

“The fear is that you miss something, so I spend a lot of time looking up as much as I can,” she said.

The city hopes to get money to make municipal buildings more energy efficient, repave roads and improve sewers, Flanigan said. It’s getting an energy audit from Alliant Energy so it’s ready to apply for energy efficiency grants when they become available.

The city of Janesville has created a wish list of potential projects, including building a new fire station, reconstructing several roads and repairing the Tallman House.

It will refer to the list as the state announces grants to find projects that meet grant requirements, City Manager Eric Levitt said.

The city has three goals in its stimulus planning, he said:

-- Create jobs.

-- Move needed capital projects off property tax rolls.

-- Move capital projects up in the city’s schedule.

The city manager’s office is coordinating the stimulus effort, but it’s relying on department heads to keep track of opportunities, Levitt said.

Rock County also is relying on its department heads, said Phil Boutwell, assistant to the county administrator. County officials met Friday to discuss stimulus strategy.

It doesn’t make sense for the county to create a wish list because it handles so many areas, Boutwell said.

The county knows what it will receive in a few areas, including $1.1 million for lead hazard reduction and $110,000 for child support enforcement. But it doesn’t know what, if anything, it will receive in most areas.

‘Supplement but not supplant’

Whatever the county receives, little will go toward reducing property taxes because the county has little choice about how to use the money, Smith and Boutwell said. For example, the lead hazard reduction grants have to be used to increase service to low-income homes. It can’t replace money the county already spends on lead abatement.

“A lot of it is expanded programming for services we currently do,” Boutwell said.

That’s a concern for the Janesville School District, too, Clifton said.

Federal law says stimulus money can be used to “supplement but not supplant” school programs, she said. That means districts can’t replace local funding with stimulus dollars.

For example, much of the money for school districts will go to programs for low-income and disabled students. But the district probably can’t reduce the amount of tax levy it contributes to those programs to lower property taxes or fund other programs, Clifton said.

“If we can’t do some cost shifting to help balance the budget, per se, we might have to go hire some more special education teachers and yet lay off some regular teachers,” she said.

But the district hopes to avoid hiring new teachers because it’s a recurring cost, she said. Instead it plans to focus on one-time expenses such as materials and equipment.

“There’s just no way, given revenue caps and our current economic conditions, that we could start new programs and expect to maintain them,” she said.

STIMULUS MONEY

Here is what already has been allocated for Rock County and Janesville through the federal stimulus package:

Rock County

-- $30,000 for the Developmental Disabilities Board. The money is for early intervention for children from birth to 3 with developmental disabilities.

-- $1.1 million for lead hazard reduction grants. The money renews an existing grant to reduce lead hazards in low-income homes.

-- $110,000 for child support enforcement. The money replaces a previous cut in federal funding, said Phil Boutwell, assistant to the county administrator.

-- $296,000 for crime control and prevention. The money tentatively will be distributed among law enforcement agencies, with $44,000 for the Rock County Sheriff’s Office, $123,000 for the Janesville Police Department and $129,000 for the Beloit Police Department. The agencies must apply for the money to get it.

-- $24,000 for victim advocacy in the district attorney’s office.

-- Nearly $3 million to improve Highway 11 between Janesville and Footville (state project)

City of Janesville

-- $618,000 in energy efficiency and conservation grants. The city isn’t sure how it will use the money, Manager Eric Levitt said.

The city has applied for stimulus money to help pay for a $672,000 bike tunnel in the first phase of Department of Transportation grants. It also has decided what it will apply for in the second and third phases, Levitt said. Most of the applications will be for road resurfacing, The city also will seek $5.8 million in infrastructure improvements for the planned St. Mary’s Janesville Hospital.