Emily Cahill, the grant development and research specialist with the Center for the Prevention of Abuse, had a different take.<\/p>\n
“Any time you start a new program, there are going to be some complications,” said Cahill, whose agency was awarded $245,371 for programs to prevent homelessness and to get the homeless into housing as quickly as possible. “I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it went. Any hoops we had to jump through were totally worth it for the additional money we received.”<\/p>\n
ARRA is one year old. The $862 billion program passed the U.S. House of Representatives with zero Republican support in February 2009 and passed the U.S. Senate with just three Republicans joining the Democrat majority. President Barack Obama signed it into law on Feb. 17, 2009.<\/p>\n
The program is a smorgasbord of tax benefits, contracts, grants, loans and entitlements that were intended to jump-start a battery-dead economy with money and subsequently lead to the creation of jobs. The White House said last week that the stimulus bill created 2 million jobs in the first year and will add another 1.5 million this year.<\/p>\n
It created six jobs, albeit temporary jobs, at Peoria Heights Grade School.<\/p>\n
“We were able to hire six para-professional reading specialists to help out our most needy students,” said Principal Gene Beltz, whose district received additional Title 1 grants of $169,000 and $53,000. “Of course, when the money is gone, so are the jobs.”<\/p>\n
In most cases, the money comes with strings attached. For instance, the Special Education Association of Peoria County has educational needs all through the system that provides service to 17 school districts in Peoria County. It received $3.2 million in additional stimulus money with instructions to spend it as quickly as possible. It doled out all but $350,000 to the 17 districts and spent its portion on office equipment.<\/p>\n
“It was an almost frightening amount of money, but we went about spending it as wisely and as quickly as we could,” said Jane Winter Clark, the director of the association. “We were informed that the money had to be used on something newly created, not on some existing program. If I had the ability to spend it anyway I wanted, I would have used it for salaries and benefits.”<\/p>\n
Government data accessible at www.recovery.gov<\/a> (or for Illinois-specific data at www.recovery.illinois.gov<\/a>) does not tell the whole stimulus story. Those numbers, such as the $124 million described as the total stimulus tally for the Tri-County Area, include only local recipients that received money filtered through state agencies such as the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.<\/p>\n There are lots more avenues that lead to what is technically defined as stimulus money. The Cash for Clunkers program gave cash benefits to people trading in old gas-guzzling cars, first-time home buyers received an $8,000 tax credit and unemployment benefits were extended. Other agencies, besides state agencies, received some stimulus money. For instance, the Peoria and Pekin Urbanized Area Transportation Study distributed contributions to 14 road construction projects in the Tri-County Area, including the reconstruction of Parkway Drive in Pekin and Prospect Road in Peoria Heights.<\/p>\n Roger Bergia, superintendent of the Peoria Heights school district, said the stimulus money is in some ways frustrating.<\/p>\n “What’s ironic about it is we get this money that’s supposed to go to create jobs, and we’re buying equipment with it that we don’t necessarily need,” he said. “I would like to use it to build something tangible that would create jobs.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Scott Hilyard can be reached at 686-3244 or at shilyard@pjstar.com.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Federal stimulus program assessment<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n There are 224 projects, businesses, services and schools in Peoria, Tazewell and Woodford counties tagged to receive $124 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money, according to government statistics. Give or take. From $96,000 to retrofit diesel trucks at Brubaker Transfer in Goodfield with more fuel-efficient engines, to $8 million to resurface 6.2 miles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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