The numbers tell it all. Stimulus dollars spent by county in Central Illinois thus far:
Macon County $7 million
Sangamon County $21 million
Piatt County $16.4 million
Champaign County $23.1 million
Shelby County $10.8 million
Coles County $47.5 million
Effingham County $13.8 million
Peoria County $133.7 million
Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33498869/ns/us_news-the_stimulus_tracker#/all/all/il/all/
Uhm, guess what county has the highest unemployment rate but is receiving the least stimulus dollars? Aren’t we special!
Kris were you able to tell if the DOT spending is included in this? I honestly don’t think it is but I really wasn’t sure. And I saw Recovery Act sign by much of the work. Of course it could be based out of other counties cause I saw it while traveling to Champaign and to Springfield as well as other places. It seems strange to me cause the DOT web site alone says we have $7 M and I know some of the money on Recovery.gov is grants to schools and small business loans. So I dont’ think this is in there….
http://rithqnwws019.rita.dot.gov/dot/index.html the link to illinois by county
http://www.dot.gov/recovery/
Well, I looked up the info on the map and so far Macon County has had 5 projects:
$1.23 mil Fletcher Park Blvd (Sidewalk, curbing work)
$2.396 mil IL 105 resurfacing
$0.72 mil Bridge work for Garfield
$.074 mil Landscaping for the Farm Progress Show (Huh?)
$.328 mil Bridge near Maroa
So that looks about right. The only other stimulus funds I’ve heard of is the money the city used to buy buses and money Forsyth got for their community building – if I remember correctly.
Pretty pathetic! And the county just raised property taxes to pay for highway upgrades. Ugh!
in recovery.gov putting in zip 62526 I get the following info:
under recipient reported:3,298,473
contracts: 1 – 207,608
grants: 7 – 3,090,865
under agency reported: 2,220,400
grants: 2 – 1,119,400
loans: 4 – 1,101,000
The contract is Caterpillar Inc 207,608
Some of the Grants:
Macon/Piatt Regional Education 282,247
Argenta/Oreana school district 681,609
Cerro Gordo School district 540,281
Housing authority piatt county 103,750
Mt zion school district 2,153,021
Decatur Park district 791,853
City of Decatur 623,309
Decatur Housing Authority 1,437,178
Decatr Macon Opportunities 185,603
Decatur opportunities 1,042,156
City of Decatur 407,376
City of Decatur 1,697,301
Dove inc 908, 552
Macon county 97,940
Illinois depart trans 3,116,468
Central illinois salvation Army 108,900
Millikin University 69,857
Community improvment center 1,119,400
Decatur Schools 5,259,468
I’m going to stop here on grants- cause I have to go to each Decatur zip and click each dot individually to get his info and there are a bunch more. Like RCC and another Millikin too.
Here are some of the small business loans
Golf USA of Forsyth 290,000
Keith and Sheri Brown Kids Castle 135,000
The Grand Design 36,000
PJ Liquors 684,500
Airfloat 640,000
Zanadu 70,000
Midwest Material Construction 112,000
I’m thinking the reporting is confusing and messy cause they put this money out through existing agencies to try and get it out there quickly.
I gotta add this
Millikin 907,166
RCC 621,600
Decatur Housing Authority
1,437,178
Mr John school of Cosmetolgy
31,460
It looks like a bunch of money to me…What I’ve put here is not even close to all of it.
found another big one:
Sanitary district of Decatur
3,684,784
Meridian school district
926,351
city of decatur
407,376
Macon county
1,689,218
Sue, thanks for going through the numbers and taking the time to post them.
I’m more interested in what the infrastructure projects are going to be – the types of projects that will add new jobs and opportunities for the future like new roads, rail lines, schools, etc. The spending on those kinds of projects have been rather puny, really nonexistent, thus far. I’m not sure what’s in the works for next year but I hope something more substantial than what we’ve seen. A bridge here and there isn’t going to matter. We’ve got a $100 million school project on the horizon that could sure use some major stimulus funds. I wouldn’t expect the full $100 million be dished out but something substantial towards the project sure would be nice.
I did read the county handed over $8.6 mil in stimulus dollar bonds to the city. I’m not sure how that works and what it can be used for. $5.2 mil is for business loans and the rest I suppose infrastructure.
Sounds good. Personally I think without the stimulus and the money that went to state and local government we would really be in a mess right. I think was done in the quickest way it could be done – giving out to existing departments to distribute but doing it this way provides the least political benefits. Because its more difficult for the public to be aware of it when its done this way.
Yeah, a lot of the stimulus money seems like bubble gum stuffed into a widening crack on the Hoover Dam. It might hold for a little while but we all know it’s not enough and it’s not the fix needed. America needs JOBS – pure and simple. Many of the big issues facing this country would be solved if people just had decent jobs – health care, deteriorating neighborhoods, aging schools, social security, etc. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Especially manufacturing jobs. That’s much of the answer.
I agree but I don’t think there is a simple answer. Our economy for number of years – has been driven on debt and fake wealth. It has basically been running on a pyramid scheme that has now collapsed. The consumer spending and housing construction that drove the entire world economy was based on U.S. home loans and home equity loans.sold on the claim that home values in the U.S. have never fallen more than 5% and that the property values would continue to rise and cover the costs. And it was a true claim that since the depression housing has not fallen more than 5 % – but only because of banking regulations. Regulations that we have abandoned little by little over the last 30 years and especially recently. The repeal of Glass Steagall Act from 1933 was repealed in 1999, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 made all kinds gambling in banking legal. These changes of the last number of years took our economy to edge of the abyss. We allowed the investment banks to gamble away our money in the name of “getting the government off the back of business”.
So how do you creat jobs without money? Our rich are already paying a lower tax rate and lower capital gains tax then ever. Our intererest rates are already at zero and were extreme low through this entire decade. We are in a mess different in many ways from any other. And it would be as deep as the great depression except we learned lessons from the and acted fast.
I just don’t think there is an easy answer.
I think there’s still enough wealth in the US to create jobs, there just isn’t enough will and there’s so much more money to be made with cheap foreign labor.
Many of the jobs that have been shipped overseas wasn’t done out of necessity; it was done to make investors and CEO’s more money – nice if you have a 401k, until the market crashes, that is. Many of the manufacturing companies, which picked up and left, were profitable but they wanted more. Unfortunately, they failed to see that by cutting their own country’s throat by shipping away jobs, it would come back and bite them too – though I see the stock market is still oblivious to the recession that is supposedly over. Hardy-har-har. The rich are still getting rich. The rest of us…well…I don’t need to say what’s happening to us.
Now the questions remains: how do we bring back manufacturing jobs in America? I guess the weak dollar will help in the long run. Other countries will be able to buy our products overseas. We’ll be the new China and China will be the old United States.
Seriously, bringing back manufacturing jobs is the answer. It really is. There just isn’t enough service jobs to go around and what makes me mad is that people like my dad, who are mechanically inclined and can fix anything, figure out any mechanical device or machine, build amazing things with their hands, have little to no opportunity in this country. People with all different aptitudes should be able to make an honest living.
Our country is run by college educated people who don’t realize there is no such thing as “unskilled labor”. Firestone learned that when they trusted inexperienced scabs to build those junky tires that blew up on all those Ford Explorers during the strike.
You and I agree very much on this issue. I believe that we need to focus on skills that use our heads and our hands. The trades and those types of skills can’t be shipped over seas – at least not as easily.
My dad retired from 20 some years at Firestone – he was an engineer – Tech Service in curing. Even being a company guy he always complained about a “Dilbert” type environment in a large company like that where no one listened to engineers or the workers who really knew their stuff. (Too this day I try to find Dilbert calendars for him for Christmas) Instead the decisions were made by “managers” who never did the actual work and often didn’t know their ___ from a hole in the ground. In this country we have promoted an entire “class” of professional managers. I think this is behind much of our problems.
Not only do I think the way we are doing it now is wrong I also believe it is environmentally hazardous. I agree with doing work locally. I think it promotes community. I’ve not checked it out thoroughly but the REAL cost of shipping needs to be reflected in the actual costs of shipping. It has true costs to our society that are not reflected in the cost of gas and roads. I’m interested in the assumptions and intents behind “cap and trade bill” currently being presented. Maybe something like this would be more beneficial to American workers than we think. I don’t know.
Hey, I’m reading a really interesting book: The Colossal Failure of Common Sense – Larry McDonald
Ex-Insider’s Book Details Lehman Brothers Collapse
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106760200
Heard about it Byers show.
I think we got everything we asked for. One problem is we have people so out of touch running our County we ended up getting short changed because they couldn’t react fast enough to the offered money. They just raised my real estate tax and if someone will write me a check for what they assessed the house for they can have it. Now I read the City unions must concede some money or we will have another tax increase. I for one would start knocking down the salary of our City lawyers, accountants, City Mgr’s, and who ever the professionals are that are supposed to be working on bringing jobs to this town. In fact what ever amount we are paying these professionals should be stopped we aren’t getting any return on their money so why pay it. I for one will be looking for another country home out of Macon County if a tax increase gets voted in. I read the Dawson is concerned about half our Fire Dept. and other City servants don’t even live in Decatur which would help some. Does anyone know who the council members were who allowed this even happen in the first place? It shouldn’t take much to change this JUST DO IT!!!!
I think Dawson’s point is a very good one. My husband is friends with a city cop and I was surprised to hear he lived out of town. I thought emergency personnel had to live within the city.
But a bigger problem is how we fund pensions in the first place. Using property taxes isn’t really the best way. And why should I be paying for their pensions when I, and most of us, don’t even have pensions of our own? Maybe 50 years ago the system made sense but times have changed.
And that’s a good point about importing so many products. How can shipping something from China still be cheaper than making it here and transporting it a much smaller distance? Caterpillar and many auto dealers have production facilities in other countries because it’s more cost effective, due to not having to transport products overseas, but somehow other countries seem to be able to produce in their own land and ship it here and still make a profit. Much of it has to due with the value of the dollar and the undervalued Chinese currency, which the Chinese ensure is worth about as much as toilet paper – probably less.