County revises $316,000 allocation

By Matt Snyder
Herald Staff Writer

MERCER COUNTY February 29, 2008 09:42 pm

— A $316,000 grant for small Mercer County communities was shifted around before commissioners approved it and sent it to the state for their nod on Thursday.
The Community Development Block Grant is a yearly grant program. Commissioners also shifted into new projects $92,392 of grant money from previous years that had not yet been spent on their designated jobs.
The problem is the grant money gets sent back to the state if it’s not spent within five years, said Chris Conti of the Mercer County Regional Planning Commission.
So commissioners took unspent money from 2004 intended to put in new windows in the Woodland Place nursing home cafeteria in Coolspring Township, along with money left over from finished projects in Jamestown and Jackson Center, and put it into a project that’s ready to go.
Woodland chairman Timothy Jablon said the plans for the window replacement had been finished and grant money was ready to be spent on the project.
Commissioner Brian Beader said the board of commissioners had been waiting on Woodland to spend the money for some time, and decided to shift it elsewhere for fear of losing the money.
Jablon said he suspected there was a miscommunication on whether they needed to wait for the grant money to hit the bank, or whether they needed to spend it and be reimbursed.
“Maybe I was waiting for the money to come and here I should have spent the money,” he said. He added that Woodland Place has its preliminary work out of the way to do the window replacement, so they’ll resubmit for the grant next year, in October.
The unspent money from Woodland and elsewhere went into a Wilmington Township storm sewer project that Beader said is ready to go. Money was then shifted out of this year’s allocation to Wilmington so the township will get the same amount as before.
The 2008 money shifted out of Wilmington Township was used to fund a few new projects. The current money will be split up like this:
• $140,550 to South Pymatuning Township for a water system, unchanged.
• The 2008 funding was reduced to $49,480 for a Wilmington Township storm sewer, but about $92,000 was freed up from the old, 2004 monies to balance the funding out.
• $6,000 to Community Food Warehouse of the Shenango Valley, up by $2,000.
• New allocation of $24,448 for a storm sewer in Mercer.
• New allocation of $25,000 for a Jamestown street improvement.
• New allocation of $13,800 for the Literacy Council.
• $56,898 for administration.
Beader said 18 percent of the grant is spent for adminstrative costs.