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  Home Page » News » Stimulus Spending

Stimulus spending

Recovery funds bring $60 million and counting to area

by Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau

From a construction company in Bayfield to a women’s clothing store in Durango to a geology project at Fort Lewis College, federal stimulus dollars have begun to arrive in Southwest Colorado.

About $60 million for more than 100 projects has arrived or is on the way to La Plata, Montezuma, Archuleta, Dolores and San Juan counties, according to a Durango Herald analysis of federal, state and private Web sites that track the stimulus bill.

Known in government circles as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, the $787 billion bill was signed by President Barack Obama in February.

Nationally, about a third
of ARRA money has been spent. Locally, many projects just now are starting, including a $138,818 grant to FLC for an undergraduate research project on the Navajo volcanic field.

Former State Sen. Jim Isgar now runs the state Rural Development office at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His office had a role in several local ARRA grants.

“On the one hand, we’re trying to get it out quickly, but on the other hand, we’re trying to be accountable, because it is taxpayer dollars,” Isgar said.

Isgar’s office granted $26,000 to the Dove Creek Volunteer Ambulance Service to buy a new Lifepak 15 heart monitor, which the Web site Gizmodo calls “so cool, you’ll forget you’re having a heart attack.”

The device will arrive soon, said Todd Parisi, Dolores County’s emergency management director. It should be more reliable and rugged in the remote areas served by the ambulance, Parisi said.

Many of the payments have gone to routine government programs, such as purchases of police equipment or construction of an operating facility for the Animas-La Plata Project.

State Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, called the stimulus bill misguided. Instead of government projects, it would have been better to cut payroll taxes, Tipton said.

“We’re continuing to see unemployment in rural Colorado and businesses being shuttered,” said Tipton, who is considering a challenge to U.S. Rep. John Salazar in 2010.

But recipients say they are putting the money to good use.

Melissa Van Sant and two business partners used a low-interest ARRA loan to open Rose Pedals, a women’s active-wear store on Florida Road in Durango.

“We got to take advantage of the Obama-nomics, basically,” Van Sant said. “It took a while to get it, but it’s a good deal.”

Business is picking up as customers spread the word about the new store, Van Sant said.

The Durango Housing Corp. got $733,956 for its low-income housing. The money will pay for maintenance, staff and utility bills after past underpayments from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“It filled a gap that HUD had,” said John Grady, managing general partner of the housing corporation. “It didn’t really go to anything new or different.”

Isgar’s office made $825,250 in loan guarantees to low-income people to buy homes.

“One of the problems with our economy is the housing market, and getting money out there so low-income people can get into homes, I think, is a great way to get the economy rolling again,” Isgar said.

Other grant recipients said the stimulus bill is paying for projects on a wish list that otherwise wouldn’t have been funded.

That’s the case at Hovenweep National Monument, where stimulus dollars are paying to stabilize a tower at the Cutthroat site near the Utah border, said Superintendent Corky Hays. Work started early this month, and another tower will be fixed in the spring.

“These are projects that we probably wouldn’t have been able to have done with this rapidity,” Hays said.

The Animas La-Plata Project got $4.4 million to build an energy-efficient operating facility in Durango, and $720,000 to install a security fence around Lake Nighthorse. Both projects still are being designed, but the stimulus bill expedited the schedule, said Doug Hendrix, spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation.

The federal government released its first small set of data on stimulus jobs Thursday, and it will release a much larger set of data Oct. 30. Until now, the only job data has been projections by White House economists.

For now, anecdotal evidence suggests construction companies, school districts and nonprofits have been among the biggest winners.

It’s not easy to quantify the stimulus bill’s effects. For example, the Four Corners Office of Resource Efficiency employs 17 people to perform home energy upgrades. But the complicated contract gets 57 percent of the money from the stimulus and the rest from existing federal funds, said executive director Aileen Tracy.

Bit by bit, though, new projects and jobs are starting.

Crossfire LLC of Ignacio got the contract to replace an old wastewater plant in Bayfield. Project manager Curtis Valencia reports news that should cheer fans of the stimulus bill – as many as 24 people might work on the project before it’s done this year, including some who weren’t on staff before.

“I created six jobs,” Valencia said.

jhanel@durangoherald.com

Durango La Plata County Airport stimulus funding from Durango Herald on Vimeo.