Municipal projects shouldn't be taken for granted

AMENIA — The year is coming to a close, and that often means looking back at what has changed in the last 365 days. Some things are easy to remember while others have a tendency to slip through the cracks. That new sidewalk the town installed a few months ago makes front lawns look a lot nicer and is a lot easier to walk on, but many people don’t stop to think about the time and energy it took to just get a simple sidewalk project off the ground.

Projects cost towns and villages money, money that the municipality might not have at their disposal. That’s where grants come in, and towns and organizations around the area are working more and more with grant writers to make their projects more competitive for funding. It’s a task with a lot of behind-the-scenes work, more than one might expect.

“It gets more and more complex every year,� acknowledged Amenia Councilwoman Vicki Doyle. She used the town’s dance program, which has been running for two decades, as an example.

“For 20  years we’ve been applying for and getting a $1,000 grant from the Dutchess County Youth Bureau,â€� she said. “But the amount of work that goes into it … at one point we almost stopped doing it altogether. If someone charged $10 per hour and they logged all the hours administering and writing and following up and making sure the awarded funds are being sent, you would have eaten up the $1,000 before you even put on the dance program.â€�

The grant application for the dance program is written by volunteers, but  as the need for more funding assistance increases, so do the standards for applying for grants, as well as the rate of success. The first thing someone like Mike Hagerty, Amenia’s official grantwriter, might tell you is that you’re not always going to be awarded the grant.

“It’s kind of like baseball,� he said last week. “Sometimes you have slumps and sometimes you hit home runs.�

Hagerty has been a part of several very successful grants for the town of Amenia, including a $480,000 grant from the state’s Transportation Enhancement Program (TEP). That grant will help extend the Harlem Valley Rail Trail from the Wassaic train station into the hamlet of Wassaic; it was awarded earlier this year.

Doyle said that grant was crucial to the project moving forward. With the grant currently budgeted at approximately $680,000, the town wouldn’t have even been able to afford a 50-percent match on funding, a common stipulation of grants. The TEP grant only requires a 20-percent match.

Hagerty has been employed by the town for the past four years, and he credits Amenia with being one of the first municipalities to recognize the value of grant writing. He said he’s easily written hundreds of grants for the town, and estimates an average of 40 to 50 hours to complete each application.

“It’s a matter of doing the research, identifying and spending the time necessary to write a competitive proposal,â€� he said.  “The key to a good grant is developing a compelling story and really documenting a need for the grant.â€�

It’s a situation that works out for the grant writer as well as the municipality or organization.

“The money that we spend we get back tenfold,� Doyle said, adding that projects like the Rail Trail extension and the Mechanic Street sidewalk project just wouldn’t be possible without funding assistance.

Getting funding awarded isn’t a given by any means. The state’s Community Development Block Grant program, an up-to-$150,000 grant Amenia has been awarded several times in the past for highway projects, was denied this year. The town was hoping to use the money to offset costs to relocate Town Hall to the former Amenia Elementary School building on Route 22. Hagerty said he was disappointed by the news, but that the county wanted the town to take ownership of the building, which it has not done yet, before it would award any funds.

“But you get knocked down and you get back up,� he said. “It does happen, and it’s been a bit of a rough year for grants. But there’s still a lot of work to be done.�

Being persistent in the field of grant writing always pays off, he concluded.

“It’s important not to hide the bad news. You learn why you didn’t get the grant, and how you can reapply in the future.�