City Council mulls grant application for stimulus money

Athens City Council spoke about three ordinances Monday that would allow Mayor Paul Wiehl to submit grant applications to fund transportation and energy-conservation projects with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

One ordinance would allow Wiehl to apply for stimulus grant funds through the U.S. Department of Energy in awards of $1 million to $5 million for a revolving-loan fund for the city to help pay for solar-energy and energy-efficiency for homeowners and perhaps commercial businesses as well, said at-large member Elahu Gosney.

These funds would provide the seed money for the Athens Solar Initiative, where city residents would be able to take out a loan from the city to fit their homes for solar power, and then pay back that loan over time through property taxes.

City Council suspended the rules to pass an ordinance allowing initial program design work for the initiative, allocating $14,000 for preliminary work by an outside source.

"We are at the point in this program where we need to have someone who has experience with this type of operation," Gosney said. "I believe this is an investment that will pay off many times over when the city has a program in place for city residents."

Another ordinance read for the first time would authorize Wiehl to submit a grant application for stimulus funds through the Ohio Department of Development for energy-efficiency improvements, Gosney said.

This is money that has been set aside by the state for smaller communities such as Athens for projects relating to energy efficiency. Gosney said that Wiehl, Third Ward member Nancy Bain, City Planner Paul Logue and himself sat down last week to discuss ways the city could use these funds.

"A few of the ideas that we came up with were projects for the water treatment plant "“ replacing windows, boilers, that sort of thing, and anything else that would reduce the energy footprint of that building and reduce costs to the city," Gosney said. "Similarly, we talked about the waste-water treatment plant as another possibility and the armory as a third possibility, as that's one of the older buildings that the city has possession of and could use improvements."

These grants do not require a match by the city.

Another ordinance that was read for the first time Monday night would allow Wiehl to submit a grant application to enter into an agreement with the Ohio Department of Transportation to provide services for the Ohio Rural Intercity Bus Program.

"This is for rural intercity routes," explained transportation committee chair Chris Knisely. "As described, two of the routes would be of interest to us as Athens to Columbus and Athens to Cincinnati."

This grant program has a 20-percent match that would be provided by the bus system Lakefront, making it expense-neutral to the city of Athens, Knisely said.