October 24, 2022 |
A Bigfoot 99 Exclusive
The State Loan and Investment Board will meet Thursday, and Rawlins may be in for bad news. State officials will consider a request by the city for a $7.5 million grant to make water infrastructure improvements. According to the paperwork submitted to the SLIB ahead of the meeting, the application from Rawlins scored low and may be denied.
Rawlins City Council has taken several actions in hopes of winning favor with SLIB officials. Last month, council members approved a water rate increase of about $20 per month. Last week, council approved using $100,000 in emergency funding from the water enterprise account to underwrite some of the design work and repairs for the transmission line.
On June 2, 2022, SLIB authorized a $675,000 minerals royalty grant to Rawlins for the design of blow-off valves and installation of cathodic protection on the 32-mile transmission line from the springs to the water treatment plant. The city had requested $1.8 million. Council obligated the $100,000 in a demonstration to SLIB that the city is willing to bear some of the financial burden of repairing its failing water system suffering from decades of neglect. Vice Mayor Jacqueline Wells made the motion.
Pictured above: File photo of Rawlins City Hall. Photo by Cali O’Hare/Bigfoot 99.
Councilwoman Linda Smith offered the second.
The city is pursuing multiple infrastructure projects, including water collection at the springs, replacing wood stave pipes with PVC, repairing breaks and corrosion in the 32-mile steel transmission line, and activating the pre-treatment plant—to name a few. The projects are bundled into phases. The timeline to complete all the improvements could stretch out five years. Funding is coming through a variety of sources.
City Engineer Austin Gilbert assured the governing body that obligating the $100,000 from the enterprise account for the Phase 3A project was worthwhile.
Council had no questions for the city engineer. Councilwoman Smith said earmarking the money for the Phase 3A work would help the city this week when SLIB considers the city’s application.
The vote to encumber the enterprise funds passed with five “yeas.” Councilman Darril Garner abstained. Councilman Aaron Durst was absent.
The state loan board consists of the state’s top five officials, two of whom are currently serving after being appointed by Governor Mark Gordon. They are scheduled to meet on Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Under Item J, Miscellaneous Matters, the board will consider 113 different funding recommendations totaling more than $225.4 million for Chapter 41, Water and Sewer ARPA Grants. The City of Rawlins is seeking the maximum grant for any single project, $7.5 million.
According to an agenda attachment detailing all 113 recommendations, the request by Rawlins has been rejected. According to the paperwork, city is not being recommended for any amount of grant funding.
The attachment to the agenda, Board Matter J-1, lists 19 projects that have been recommended for full or partial funding. Among these lucky 19 applications is #1177 from the Town of Saratoga for the Spring Avenue water line replacement project.
The Town of Saratoga’s application for $966,000 was recommended in full. The Town of Encampment’s request, #1212, of nearly $1.4 million is also recommended in full, according to the attachment submitted SLIB board members.
Due to limited federal funding, the remaining 95 applications are not recommended for any ARPA funding. Among these is the one from the City of Rawlins.
The recommendations were based on scoring by the Office of State Lands and Investment. The higher an application scored, the more likely the recommendation. Saratoga received the highest score, 24. Scores below 17 were recommended for no funding at all. Rawlins’ application produced a single digit score of nine, was third from the bottom.
When SLIB meets on Thursday, it may award funding based strictly on the raw scores. Or board members may take a more lenient approach.
The recommendations from the Office of State Loans and Investments show some variance from the raw scores, in its words “to make the best use of the available funds.”
The Legislature appropriated only $50 million from the state’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act money to fund the local water and sewer program. Rawlins, even with its match, asked for over 10 percent of the pot.
The city was not alone in asking for the highest allowable grant. Gillette and Green River also applied for $7.5 million. According to the list, both communities received recommendations for their full requests.
It’s unclear how much of a match each community is making. Rawlins’ match is $1.3 million, or 15 percent of the total estimated project cost of $8.4 million. About half of the city’s match money comes from another SLIB grant. Council approved using $717,292 from the general fund and $675,000 from another SLIB grant to put together the $1.3 million match.
Council approved the match and the funding sources for the match at a special meeting on August 10th after earlier confusion about the amount of the match and the funding source. Both Mayor Terry Weickum and Councilman Aaron Durst were absent from the special meeting. The motions for the match passed on 5-0 votes.
One person familiar with the SLIB grant process told Bigfoot 99 that the State Loan and Investment Board Office does not favor grants where matches fall below 50 percent.
City officials told Bigfoot 99 after this report first aired on Monday that members of the Rawlins governing body will lobby SLIB ahead of Thursday’s meeting.
