Money harder to get in Orange County, Carrboro

Orange County and the town of Carrboro have had a hard time getting a hold of stimulus funds that larger counties and cities are receiving almost effortlessly.

Because the county has a population of fewer than 200,000 and the town has a population of fewer than 35,000, both have to compete for funds. But larger counties and cities, like Chapel Hill, are entitled to money, assistant county manager Willie Best said.

“We just have to constantly be applying for things, probably for the next two years,” he said. “It makes it more difficult for us because we’re competing against other places in North Carolina and across the country.”

It’s hard to predict when the money will come in. Best will have to seek out opportunities to fund county projects as they come along for possibly the next two years, he said.

Best said he hopes for an opportunity to use stimulus funds for broadband in rural Orange County and replacing lights in schools, but he’s not picky, either.

“We’re sort of looking at everything,” he said.

If he finds something applicable, Best usually informs a county department of its opportunity to receive the funds, then the department drafts a project proposal, he said.

The county has received a total of $545,556 in stimulus funds, mostly for transportation, Best said Thursday.

Carrboro is still waiting for about $403,500 in stimulus reimbursement for two sidewalk projects and a bus shelter project, public works director George Seiz said. The funds are allocated through the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The stimulus funds the county has received so far apply toward projects it wouldn’t have spent money on this year anyway — light-transit buses for the Department on Aging.

“We never would have bought anything this year or next year with the budget,” said Jerry Passmore, director of the Department on Aging. “We were fortunate. Our buses are falling apart.”

The buses were indirectly funded through the money the Metropolitan Planning Organization got from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The other projects the department has applied for and could get money for before mid-September include bike racks for buses, bus shelters in Hillsborough and transit software that would cooperate with Chapel Hill Transit’s.

“With 100 counties in North Carolina and probably 60 or so with transit operations requesting this stuff, with rural counties asking for a lot of the same things we do, it’s very competitive,” Passmore said. “But the county doesn’t have money.”

The Town of Chapel Hill, entitled to stimulus funds because of population size, already has received more than six times the amount of money received by Orange County.

In addition to his normal work, Best lines up the potential projects with no idea how much the county can hope to receive or what new technologies or projects will earn the county stimulus dollars in the future.

“It’s elusive,” he said. “A lot of the stimulus programs are still being developed.”


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