Yesterday Governor Jennifer Granholm made two stops to talk about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the federal stimulus package. Her presentations in both the City of Howell and at the Ypsilanti Area Community Utility focused on the $66 million Michigan will receive for drinking water proejcts. Both she and DEQ Director Steven Chester mentioned that for FY 09, there will be 16 communities that will receive funding. That's good news, considering the we've heard rumors that there wasn't going to be a mechanism to get funds out in time for FY 09.
Here's even better news. Aside from an appropriations bill, there really should be any other legislative action that is necessary to get the ARRA funds out. DEQ believes that funds can be distributed as either low interest loans or zero interest loans right now and that principle will be/can be forgiven almost immediately. This is all dependent on what the final guidelines and requirements from the federal government will be. Hopefully we will know what those are in the next couple of weeks.
Just to remind you again, if you have any potential shovel read projects (transportation, transit, water, sewer) projects, make sure that you're working with your MPO/MDOT (for transportation projects) or DEQ (for water/sewer projects) so that we can get your projects on the list for consideration.
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