Granton Board moves ahead with water project grant process
Ever since its Main Street project got pushed back to 2024, the Granton Village Board has been jumping through several new hoops to obtain the funding it needs to replace the water and sewer lines underneath its streets. The Board discussed the latest of these challenges at its most recent meeting and debated whether or not the costs were too high.
At its meeting on Nov. 9, the Board first listened to a representative of the Cedar Corporation on the latest efforts to apply for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). Back in September, the Board had been informed that its earlier attempt to get funding for its water/sewer project was unsuccessful due to a mistake in paperwork by the Cedar Corporation. That mistake proved costly, as it not only delayed the project to 2024, but also meant that another attempt to get CDBG grant funding would require plans and designs on the application that were not required before.
“This was our last chance before the new rules were put in place,” said Board trustee Meghan Naedler on the previous attempt to get grant funding. “The last application did not require actual biddable plans.”
Moving forward, any application for CDBG grants will have that requirement, which in turn will raise the upfront cost the village will have to pay before it even puts a shovel in the ground. While the Cedar Corporation has agreed to offset some of the costs of reapplying for the grant because of their previous error, the engineering firm did not budge on lowering the costs of the now-needed biddable plans, which will cost approximately $112,000.
After looking at the price tag, the members of the Village Board held an at-length discussion on the cost of the designs, its concerns with certain details on the contract with the Cedar Corporation and whether or not it should reconsider continuing its partnership with the engineering firm. At the end of the discussion however, the Board decided that it would ultimately be wasting time and potentially money by not committing to a decision about the project.
“It’s got to get done, I guess,” said president Tom Gorst. “We can’t hee-haw about it I don’t think.”
The new CDBG grant application that the Village of Granton will be applying for will be due around May of next year, with the process to apply for the latest round expected to take around three months to complete. This part of the process will include surveying the expected project route and coming up with biddable designs on the pipelines beneath Main Street, and the plans will belong to the village with the $112,000 payment. If the funding from the CDBG grant is awarded, the village will move forward with its plans to replace the water and sewer lines from Railroad Street to Fifth Street at a cost of approximately $1.6 million.
In other action taken by the Board at its Nov. 9 meeting, the Board finalized the details surrounding the sale of the triangle parcel of property just off of Highway 10 to Dollar General for the purpose of building a store. The 1.8-acre parcel of land will be sold for $120,000 and will include water and sewer extensions to the site.
