PORTAGE | Communities across Lake and Porter counties learned Tuesday the municipalities will have about 16 percent less in federal stimulus funding than originally anticipated.
For Gary, that's a loss of $469,278; Portage will lose $127,475; Merrillville will lose $154,942 and Valparaiso's share will decline by $255,725, according to revised figures released at the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission's Transportation Policy Committee meeting.
Last month some $21 million was divided between communities based on projects submitted. However, NIRPC had only $18 million to distribute. The idea was that some of the projects would fail to meet state and federal standards and be dropped from the project list. That would free up the additional money to fund qualifying projects.
However, federal and state officials told NIRPC it couldn't be done that way and the list had to be pared to meet the $18 million in stimulus funding.
The announcement brought heated discussion about the process of distributing the stimulus money.
Munster Town Engineer James Mandon wanted to know what would happen then to the additional money if projects didn't qualify and if communities could get funding for projects that didn't make the first round of approval.
NIRPC Planner Gary Evers said communities would have to start at the beginning to get new projects to qualify for stimulus funding.
Merrillville Town Councilman Shawn Pettit voluntarily dropped one of this town's three projects, the repaving of Colorado Street between 101st Avenue and Harms Road. But, he asked, if he did, would Merrillville still keep the $945,000 presently earmarked for it to divide between the two remaining projects?
Evers told him yes.
Pettit, who also sits on the NIRPC executive board, said the process has been made unnecessarily difficult. Instead of prioritizing projects between communities, the funds should have been divided by population or lane miles and its spending left up to the communities.
"It is suppose to be stimulating my economy and it isn't doing it," said Pettit.
All five of the Portage projects on the list, yet to be approved by INDOT, are now all underfunded. Officials said they'll have to either cut road paving projects from three to two or come up with additional funding.
