State and federal grants are costing cities lots of money.
NORWAY -- Potholes can be found up and down Norway St. in downtown Norway. That is why the street will be included in a million dollar road repair project this spring.
Most of the project will be paid for by state grants which have become difficult to come by.
"It's very difficult for us to find outside funding sources for road only projects,” said Norway City Manager Ray Anderson. “So the priorities tend to shift towards areas that have a need in utility area [such as] water, sewer. Like in our case, we've been working on storm water improvements."
Mark Girard is a vice president with Coleman Engineering, the firm that is working with Norway on the road project. He hoped the project would have started months ago, but grant delays among other things forced the delay.
"We have to get out before the snow flies to do survey work,” Girard said. “If the funding isn't available, it makes it difficult for us to be able to do that, and we don't like to have to survey in the snow. But sometimes we have to if the funding is not available."
Many of the state and federal grants require local matching, which means cities like Norway have to pay a certain percentage of the total cost. For this spring's project, that's 14 percent or $240,000.
"Match money is becoming increasingly harder to come by from the local level,” Anderson said. “That's with the tightening economy, tightening budgets, revenue sharing cuts eat into some of our operations on the general fund."
Anderson said the city can afford the project, but it has to be aware of which grants it can and can't apply for.
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