By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
Local officials were scrambling Monday to figure out what the recently approved $787 billion economic stimulus package might mean to Salisbury and Rowan County.
They still aren’t sure.
When will the state and federal governments make the stimulus money available? Will it come in the form of grants and loans? Who decides how the money is doled out and will high priority projects be funded?
“I’ve heard nothing but rumors,” said Carl Ford, chairman of the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. “I haven’t seen or heard anything concrete.”
A top priority for Rowan County and the region remains the Interstate 85 bridge over the Yadkin River ó part of a 6.8-mile widening project between Rowan and Davidson counties that would cost upwards of $300 million.
But the stimulus package also could provide money for other bridges, housing, broadband, public transit, public safety officers, local airports, renewable energy, schools, the VA hospital and more.
“I do see opportunity in here,” Robert Van Geons, executive director of the Salisbury-Rowan Economic Development Commission, said Monday as he was looking over facets of the recovery act.
“There’s definitely a lot of investment, and we need to get involved with it.”
The I-85 bridge over the Yadkin River has the backing of Gov. Bev Perdue, who Ford described as “sticking her neck out” for the project when a Rowan-Davidson delegation visited her soon after she took office.
But in the roughly $850 million slated to go to N.C . Department of Transportation as part of the stimulus funds, nothing specific is earmarked for the Yadkin River bridge.
Pat Ivey, division engineer for the five-county area that includes Rowan and Davidson counties, said $776 million of the stimulus money coming to North Carolina for highways and bridges will be distributed by the DOT through its normal equity formula.
Division 9’s share of that pie would only be about $49 million, “which is a lot of money but will certainly not” address the Yadkin River bridge and many other highway projects in the division, Ivey said.
All the divisions provided the state DOT with potential “shovel-ready” projects, which added up to more than $5 billion.
Division 9 identified some $105 million worth of projects, not counting the Yadkin River bridge.
Dara Demi, a spokesperson for the state DOT, said Monday that 11 projects to be financed by the stimulus package will be let for bids in March, with other stimulus-related projects to come in following months.
The projects chosen will be aimed at stimulating job creation across the state, Demi said.
For Division 9, the first stimulus project chosen is a 1.14-mile, $20.1 million highway project touching both Stokes and Forsyth counties. The road work involves Tobaccoville Road from the RJR entrance in Forsyth County to Kirby Road in King, located in Stokes County.
“This is just the first round,” Ivey said.
These first 11 stimulus package-related projects have an estimated price tag of $90.9 million and would include two Stanly County road projects ó $5.6 million for the Ridge Road extension to Airport Road and $4.4 million for an N.C. 73 bridge over Long Creek.
Ivey said the Yadkin River bridge remains on the DOT’s radar, and “our folks in Raleigh are working feverishly” to make it a shovel-ready project, so it can be ready to go “this spring or early this summer.”
“It can certainly be ready for the stimulus (money) or whatever,” he said.
Perdue said Monday she is preparing to spend North Carolina’s slice of an economic stimulus plan quickly, hoping to infuse the cash into projects to get people to work and get the attention of Washington.
Perdue said the bill isn’t all that she’d hoped for, arguing that it should have contained more money to cover Medicaid shortfalls and more investment in infrastructure. But, overall, Perdue said she was pleased.
Her office released a list of billions of dollars worth of “shovel-ready” projects, spanning from roads to school construction to wastewater improvements.
North Carolina is expecting to receive at least $6.1 billion from the $787 billion stimulus plan expected to be signed by President Obama today. That doesn’t include money for tax cuts and other competitive spending.
The $850 million coming to the state DOT includes some $131 million for public transit.
State Rep. Lorene Coates, D-Rowan, said she last spoke on the Yadkin River bridge with N.C. Transportation Secretary Gene Conti about two-and-a-half weeks ago.
“It’s on the top of all the lists,” Coates said of the bridge project.
The DOT’s shovel-ready list includes two bridge replacements in Rowan County: $450,000 for a new bridge on Shue Road and $400,000 fora new bridge off McCanless Road.
Potential Rail Division stimulus projects include a $6.5 million grade separation which would extend N.C. 150 (Mooresville Road) and take it under the north-south railroad tracks, eliminating the Salisbury crossing at Klumac Road.
Potential Public Transportation Division stimulus money would include $240,000 for expanding Salisbury Transit routes, $108,000 for bus fare subsidies and $722,000 for two new 35-foot buses.
Doug Paris, assistant to the city manager in Salisbury, said the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities had lobbied Washington for a return to revenue sharing, in which funds would be sent directly to local governments. “The bill did not go in that direction,” Paris noted.
Salisbury city government has begun the process of trying to figure out how the stimulus package will be funneled through the state and federal governments and what opportunities exist for cities.
Mayor Susan Kluttz presented a list of Salisbury’s shovel-ready projects when she visited Washington in connection with the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting and the presidential inauguration.
“Our biggest project was the I-85 sewer project,” Paris said of the joint city-county effort to extend sewer south of Salisbury toward China Grove. Paris said that project would supply short-term jobs and long-term economic development and seems perfectly suited for stimulus money.
“It’s like a one-two punch,” he said.
City officials hoped grants would be available for infrastructure projects such as that, but it has learned that assistance might come instead through the state Division of Water Quality in no-interest loans.
Salisbury’s police and fire departments are trying to determine what stimulus funds might be available to them. And the stimulus bill also includes $7.2 billion toward broadband.
Salisbury has recently set on a course of constructing a fiber optic cable utility.
Paris said the city could benefit from extra funding toward its Community Development Block Grant program for low-income housing and an additional component to the Neighborhood Stabilization program, for which the city now has a $5 million application under review.
Van Geons was looking over several pages Monday detailing the amounts of stimulus money going to various programs. The EDC plans to hold an event in late March related to government procurement opportunities available to local business, and the stimulus package fits in nicely.
“The federal government, in any year, is the largest single customer,” Van Geons said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.