Stratford to send out income surveys for possible grant

Stratford residents living on four blocks of Legion and Legacy streets can expect to receive an income survey in the mail soon after the village board voted Tuesday to move ahead with a possible grant application for a future street reconstruction project.

At their regular monthly meeting, village trustees approved a $4,000 contract with MSA Professional Services to determine whether the village is eligible for up to $1 million from a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), a federal program administered by the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA).

In order to qualify for a CDBG, the village must show that at least 51 percent of residents in a proposed project area are considered to have low-to-moderate household incomes based on a threshold specific to Stratford. In this case, the village is looking at a possible project on Legacy and Legion streets, from Myrtle to North Street, in the area just north of Stratford Elementary.

If a CDBG is approved for the project, the village would have to match the $1 million with a $500,000 contribution, for a total budget of $1.5 million. The money would be used to reconstruct the roadway, replace the sidewalks and curb and gutter and install new water and sewer infrastructure.

Trustee Todd Belter noted that a previous estimate for all of that work was closer to $4 million, so it’s unclear at this point how much of the proposed project could be accomplished with a CDBG. MSA engineer Dan Knoeck said the work can always be broken up into segments to match the available funding.

Under the village’s contract with MSA, the firm has until Feb. 15, 2026, to compile all of the income data necessary for the village to apply for a CDBG in May of next year. If the village were to be awarded a grant, the project would have to start on or before July 1, 2027 and be completed by Oct. 31 of that year.

Jennifer Trader, a funding specialist for MSA, said the firm plans to start right away on collecting income surveys, with the hope of getting all 25 residents in the project area to fill them out by September if possible.

“The goal is definitely that we would send out these surveys and people would send them all back right away,” she said. “Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes we have to go door to door.”