St. Ignatius City Council hears about federal, state funding opportunities
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ST. IGNATIUS — St. Ignatius City Council heard a presentation June 1 from nonprofit Mission West Community Development Partners about the possibilities of using federal stimulus monies to tackle long-term town projects.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do some of the things that we maybe thought were too big to do,” Executive Director Jim Thaden said.
The state and federal departments of commerce and the U.S. Treasury Department have made many funds available, he said.
As a result, the group can now help startups and nonprofits access funding where they couldn’t before. At least one major project is expected to be funded in the St. Ignatius area in the next few weeks, and other projects to the north, including developments on the fairgrounds in Ronan are also moving forward, according to Thaden.
“If you have any projects that have kind of seemed beyond the reach or that have been turned down before we’d like to try to take a second look at them and see if maybe we can put pieces together,” Thaden said.
St. Ignatius town council members had several projects in mind. Leaky roofs and badly needed updates to the town hall and police department and updates to the town’s sewer infrastructure have long been on the council’s wish list, but all previous attempts at funding have failed, the members noted. The council members were appreciative of Thaden’s interest and offer to help, but they were also wary.
“We’d be really appreciative if you recognized that Lake County comes past Round Butte Road,” Council President Ray Frey said, indicating that communities to the north seem to fare better when applying for projects.
Thaden said that there were new state funds also available for different types of projects, including sewer projects.
Public Works Director Scott Morton said that historically the town has struggled to come up with engineering fees required to get projects to a stage where they qualify as “shovel ready” to receive federal funds. Morton said the town did have one shovel-ready project where the engineering was complete during the Obama administration, and then the federal government came back and said it couldn’t qualify.
This problem isn’t unique to St. Ignatius, Thaden said.
“It’s not just all across Montana, it’s all across the country, that rural communities don’t have resources to do the engineering, and then they get beat out because the cities do have the resources,” Thaden said.
Morton said the current lumber market also poses a challenge to getting projects like a town hall remodel done.
“We talked to people but we couldn’t even apply because you needed a contractor to give a firm bid and even the lumber yards only give you a four-hour bid right now,” Morton said.
Council members instructed Morton to get the contact information of Community Development Center Director Brenna Fulks so that they might work with Mission West on project ideas. Updates to the town’s sewer main would be the top priority, the council said.
