Various organizations inside the city of Dunkirk were awarded a healthy portion of money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) - $12.8 million, according to recovery.gov.
However, the city government was largely overlooked during the first round of stimulus fund distribution, city officials said.
When the bill was passed, it appropriated billions of dollars to state governments for infrastructure revitalization. Winning grants for infrastructure improvement was a competitive process - municipalities submitted project documentation to the state, and the state decided who got funding.
"The Recovery Act gave states the authority to distribute funds to municipalities and while I understand the reasoning behind it," said Rep. Brian Higgins, D-South Buffalo, "putting money into the hands of state government takes the decision making away from local representatives who really know their community needs best."
Mayor Richard Frey said the city submitted multiple infrastructure projects, but did not get funding for any. Proposed projects included repairs to Lakefront Boulevard and water treatment plant updates.
Everything - permits and designs - was in place for those construction projects, Frey said, but still the city did not receive any funding.
"We proposed close to $32 million in projects - shovel ready, that's what you had to have," Frey said, later adding, "Nothing flew with that. We didn't receive anything for any of our projects."
City Department of Development Director Kory Ahlstrom said, thus far, Dunkirk has not seen much of an impact from the stimulus legislation.
"The Recovery Act has had very limited direct effects on business in the city of Dunkirk," Ahlstrom said. "Our CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) funding awarded us one set of money, and we have competitively applied for some other moneys that we haven't heard about yet. But by and large the infrastructure improvements that were theoretically included in the Recovery Act have bypassed the city."
The funding for the harbor dredging came partly from the Recovery Act. Of the total $1.196 million in project funding, $820,000 came from ARRA, through the $4.6 billion which the bill appropriated to the Army Corps of Engineers.
"The harbor would have been my lowest priority." Frey said, disappointed the city has not seen more funding. "You had to be shovel-ready and we were... but I guess they didn't go with our priorities."
The other portion of ARRA funding the city received, through their CDBG, will be turned into a low-interest loan to help facilitate the construction of a waterpark at the Clarion Hotel.
According to Higgins' office, another $610,000 will be coming to the city to repave 0.2 miles of Doughty Street from Route 60 to Lincoln Avenue.
"While the intent of the bill was to support additional projects, above and beyond what was already budgeted for, many states are simply using the federal dollars to fund projects they already intended to fund with state dollars," Higgins said. "Dunkirk has a list of projects ready to go and I share Mayor Frey's frustration that more wasn't done to move those projects along."
Having already started the competitive process for round two of the stimulus funding, the city hopes to have better luck landing infrastructure grants, this time around.