Latest News
Auto Repair
Blinds
Building/Remodeling
Floor Refinishing
Insulation
Landscaping
Landscaping
Lightning Rods
Moving
Overhead Doors
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,� 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.�
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,� he said. “The key to a good grant is developing a compelling story and really documenting a need for the grant.�
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.�
Related Stories
Get Local News Delivered To Your Inbox
Subscribe to receive stories reported for, by, and about our neighbors, on the issues affecting you.
By signing up you agree to our
privacy policy
.
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.