By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
Many town officials apply to the same grant every year, even if they know their likelihood of getting one is slim.
“They’re quite competitive,” said Preston Bristow, who is the select board administrator in Barnard.
Barnard has given up trying to get a bike path grant for sidewalk and pedestrian paths in the center of town.
“We continue to be advised that we’re just not going to rank high enough for that,” said Bristow. “They (the Agency of Transportation) looks at numbers, the most people it’s going to benefit, and urban communities just do better.”
The Agency of Transportation awarded 57 grants for paving totaling $7.4 million this past year and awarded 79 grants totaling $7.3 million for structures, said AOT Technical Services Engineer Alec Portalupi.
It met 36.5 percent of the demand for structures grants and 27 percent of the demand for paving grants.
The demand for grants outweighs available funding 4-to-1 in some cases.
Barnard and other small towns know the reality: the less people and roads you have, the more you struggle to get money.
Reading select board chair Bob Allen has spent 10 years applying for a grant to repave Tyson Road.
“If we don’t get a grant for it we’re going to have to do it out of taxpayer money,” Allen said.
Tyson Road, which is about 3.5 miles long, is the only paved road in Reading. It could cost more than $250,000 to repave — an amount that could wreak havoc on Reading’s budget.
“Each year it gets reviewed but when you’re talking about that kind of money it’s pretty tough to find it in a small town like Reading,” Allen said.
The AOT is proposing a $618 million budget next year. One hundred million of that is reserved for town highways for all of Vermont’s 255 towns.
Woodstock Municipal Manager Phil Swanson files for four different grants or so every year. He works on them a little every day.
“The grant programs are really never enough to help every town throughout the state. There’s just not enough money to help every town with every problem,” Swanson said.
This past year, Swanson was denied a grant for a box culvert construction on Cox District Road. He was also denied a paving grant for Church Hill Road. The two grants could have given the town $350,000.
He’s applying for them again this year.
“Sooner or later I’ll get them both. It’s just a matter of persistence,” he said.
Swanson is also working on a $250,000 Safe Routes to School grant to build a new sidewalk between Cross Street and Vail Field and update the crosswalks on School Street.
“The towns that get the money, get the application in and the other guys complain that the programs are shrinking — which is not an untrue statement,” Swanson said.
The state tells towns to apply to every grant they can every year, even if the town just got a grant.
“We tell them don’t; hold back. We want to go back to the legislature and tell them what the true demand for these programs are. If they don’t apply I don’t get a real good picture to what the demand is,” said Portalupi.
The state has different mechanisms for awarded grants based on the type. While some are reserved for larger towns, others, like structures grants, are awarded to towns that apply every 3-5 years.
“We strive for equitable distribution, but also weigh structural needs,” said Portalupi.
Hartland recently received $142,000 for paving.
Hartland Town Manager Bob Stacey applies when he knows he’s going to get a grant.
“I have a pretty good idea of when I’m going to get that—every 5, 6, 7 years,” Stacey said.
While some towns like Pomfret rely more on capital reserve funds, grants are an “essential” part of the budget, some town officials say.
Reading doesn’t have a capital reserve fund.
This year, Reading’s structures grants total $350,000 to repair two bridges. It’s almost half of the town’s total income. Reading also has an $18,000 engineering grant to design those bridges and a $4,000 grant for road and inventory work.
This past year grants saved Woodstock taxpayers $12 for every $100,000 of property value.
The $103,000 worth of grant money in the town and another $77,500 in the village will pay for police training, a culvert on Gully Road, a snow dump and a park and a park-and-ride facility.
“Cynics would say the state taxes you and then you get the money back in grants,” Bristow said. “The proponents would say you’re forced to really think of projects and present them in an organized way.
“People would like to keep their taxes as low as possible, so that’s what we do.”
This article first appeared in the February 11, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.