READI group meeting weekly to discuss possible grant-funded projects

0

An informal steering committee is now meeting every Thursday at noon to discuss which local projects might be put into an application for up to $50 million in grant funding.

The grant opportunity is called READI, and Brown County has committed to try for it with the 11-county Indiana Uplands region.

The local steering committee has been asked to come up with a list of approximately five projects to contribute to the Indiana Uplands’ grant application. Whether or not those projects will actually make it into the application remains to be seen, as the 10 other counties in the region also will be contributing ideas.

Indiana Uplands has asked all 11 counties to submit their projects by the end of July; the region’s READI application and updated strategic plan are due to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation by the end of August.

So far, the Brown County group has had two Thursday noon meetings to gather information on projects, and more are planned every Thursday this month.

At the first lunch meeting on July 1, the group came up with six overarching themes: housing, water/sewer infrastructure, childcare, social infrastructure (like volunteerism, diversity and inclusion work, and entrepreneurship), physical infrastructure (like roads and trails) and green initiatives (which also includes floodplain mitigation).

At the July 8 meeting, information was gathered about water/sewer infrastructure projects that are already in progress or awaiting funding. The July 15 meeting will focus on housing.

So far, people attending the meetings mostly have been elected officials, appointed members of various boards, or community volunteers. Brown County Community Foundation CEO Maddison Miller strongly encourages people working in the private sector who have connections to these topics to attend the upcoming Thursday meetings.

“We need business and private owners and entrepreneurs involved in the process,” she said. “Private investment will be driving this initiative, and if we don’t get the right business owners in this room, we’re not going to make headway.”

It is possible that the READI grant could help private developers move their ideas along, such as home-building. Real estate agents and people who have plans to build housing in Brown County have been invited to this week’s meeting to share their plans and explain what funding they need to make their projects happen.

Water/sewer projects were the topic of last week’s meeting. Representatives from the Town of Nashville, Brown County Regional Sewer District and Brown County Water Utility shared information about projects they have under way and whether they needed funding to get them going.

BROWN COUNTY WATER UTILITY

This member-owned utility, which supplies water to most of Brown County, will have a public hearing at 8 a.m. July 20 about its plans to upgrade a portion of its water system. That meeting will be at the BCWU office in Bean Blossom.

The projects will cost an estimated $4.2 million. They include drilling a new well to replace a 40-year-old one that no longer works; replacing 14,900 feet of water mains in five areas; replacing about 600 service lines to cut down on leaks; working on equipment in the Spurgeon’s booster station in Van Buren Township; working on components that monitor parts of the water system; repairing the foundation of the BCWU building, replacing the roof and flooring, remodeling the front office for better security, installing a backup generator and repairing the asphalt; and buying new meter-reading equipment.

These projects will not be expanding the water utility’s service area, but rather increasing the quality of that service, said Ellen Masteller, longtime office manager. Some lines will be upsized to allow more water to flow through them, and mains will be replaced — some of which are original to the water system — before they can break and cause major problems.

BCWU did not make a specific funding ask of the READI group.

Masteller and BCWU board President Ben Phillips said that BCWU did not qualify for funding for this project from the Indiana Finance Authority. It was just below the cutoff, so Masteller is hopeful that it will make the funding list in the next round.

TOWN OF NASHVILLE

Nashville is in the process of connecting all of Brown County State Park with water and sewer service. The state has already committed to funding the work needed to make this happen inside the park; the town just learned during last week’s meeting that it qualified for funding from the Indiana Finance Authority.

Part of the park is already on town sewer; this project would switch all sewer service over to the town’s wastewater treatment plant and upgrade the plant to take on that flow, as well as fix problems at the plant that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management flagged more than a year ago.

The park currently produces its own drinking water from Ogle Lake; this project would eliminate that need and send Nashville Utilities water to the park instead.

The cost of the project is about $6.2 million, but after the state’s commitment for the park work, and the recent acceptance from the IFA program, the town did not ask for any funding help from READI.

BROWN COUNTY REGIONAL SEWER DISTRICT

The BCRSD has about $30 million worth of projects in the works that it needs help to fund, BCRSD board Vice President Clint Studabaker told the group.

The board has worked for years to get the Bean Blossom area on sewer, but without data to show the need, and that became a sticking point with residents who didn’t want to pay to become sewer customers.

Over the past two or three years, board members, volunteers from various agencies, and engineering firm Lochmueller group have been gathering data from septic system records and water samples from creeks in the Bean Blossom watershed. A project is underway to determine whether the e.coli detected in the creeks is coming from animal or human sources, but so far, the answer is both, Studabaker told the group. The BCRSD received a $106,200 grant from ROI in March 2020 to do that work.

The BCRSD also is working with the Helmsburg Regional Sewer District on a regional sewer plant, possibly to be built in Helmsburg, where a small plant already exists.

In the meantime, a group of Lake Lemon homeowners has been working with the BCRSD to get sewer service to their homes. They know that untreated wastewater from their septic systems is washing into the lake whenever there’s flooding, Studabaker said.

Some engineering work remains to be done on the Lake Lemon project as well as some on the Bean Blossom/Helmsburg areas, he said. They’re planning to seek funding for that work and the money needed to build out the projects from the State Revolving Fund, Indiana Finance Authority and the State Water Infrastructure Fund (SWIF). Match money likely will be required, and that’s where READI could help, Studabaker said.

Nancy Crocker suggested that maybe READI could provide a grant program to help people hook onto sewers when they become available.

No decisions have been made yet about what projects from Brown County will be submitted for the Indiana Uplands READI application. It also is not guaranteed that those submitted projects will be funded.

In addition to in person at the BCCF building on State Road 135 North, weekly READI planning meetings will be offered on Zoom at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83306136255, meeting ID 833 0613 6255.

[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About READI” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]

In May, Gov. Eric Holcomb and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) announced the launch of READI. This initiative will dedicate $500 million in state appropriations to strategically advance quality of place and quality of life, innovation, entrepreneurship, and talent attraction within self-defined Indiana regions. Through READI, regional grants of up to $50 million will support projects and programs that help make Indiana a magnet for talent and economic growth. Regions will be required to provide matching dollars to leverage the potential of READI.

ROI and Radius Indiana are coordinating READI grant efforts for the 11-county Indiana Uplands Region, which includes Brown, Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange, Owen, and Washington counties.

Brown County has until July 30 to submit its project ideas to ROI; then, ROI and Radius Indiana will have until Aug. 31 to submit the grant application for the region.

Project submissions can represent projects/programs in various stages of development, from conception to implementation. Projects and programs should have the capacity to grow the region’s economic outcomes through investments in place-based talent, business, and quality of place opportunities.

READI funding decisions are expected to be made by the IEDC in December 2021.

More information is available at https://regionalopportunityinc.org/readi.

[sc:pullout-text-end]

No posts to display