The city of Bainbridge Island is hoping for $585,000 in federal stimulus money to repave the portion of Madison Avenue between Winslow Way and Wyatt Way.
The city also wants $90,000 to repave part of Manitou Beach Road.
Last year, the city only used $60,000 of the $150,000 it was awarded for pedestrian and bicycle improvements near Blakely School.
For more about expected federal road work funding in Kitsap County, click here.
CNN recently ventured to Bainbridge Island to check in on the little police boat that got Sen. John McCain so mad late last year. You can watch their piece above. Lots of footage of Eagle Harbor and Bainbridge ferry commuters.
As you may recall, McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma singled out the boat on their list of the nation’s most wasteful stimulus spending projects. You can read my story about it here.
The city will begin the final phase of federally-funded bicycle and pedestrian improvements along Blakely Avenue.
The project, which extends from Bucklin Hill Road to the IslandWood environmental learning center’s driveway, was one of three Kitsap County transportation projects awarded federal stimulus funding.
The final phase includes the widening of Blakely’s north shoulder across from Blakely Elementary School. Work crews have already installed a new sidewalk linking the Blakely Heights neighborhood with the school, a drop-off area on the south side of Baker Hill Road to ease congestion in the school parking lot, and new road center islands with solar-powered beacons to slow traffic.
The project’s construction costs will likely come in under budget. Initially estimated at $67,000, the project’s contractor bid at just over $46,600.
“We were very pleased to receive such a reasonable bid,” acting Public Works Director Bob Earl said in a statement. “With city staff costs and contingency funds included, the total project budget is estimated at $96,000 – considerably less than the (stimulus) funding. This means that island residents will benefit from the project with no (local) tax dollars expended.”
Approximately $50,000 of the $150,000 stimulus award is expected to return to Kitsap County for reallocation in a future funding round.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray announced today that she secured an additional $7.6 million in federal money for Washington’s ferry systems.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood admitted the sole $750,000 grant awarded to Washington was an oversight and would be fixed. The initial grant was for a Skagit County ferry that is not a part of WSF.
The additional funds secured by Murray include $3 million for WSF’s Anacortes terminal replacement project, $2 million for King County’s ferry system and, for us Kitsapers, a hefty $2.5 million for Kitsap Transit’s passenger ferry prototype project.
State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond told the AP that state and county ferry systems applied for 11 grants totaling about $56 million.
Washington has the largest ferry system in the nation. But initially, of the 19 states that received ferry money, Washington received more than only Arkansas and Kentucky.
Guess what? Texas has a ferry system. And it received over $7 million in the Fed’s latest round of stimulus funding.
How much did Washington State Ferries (the largest ferry system in the nation) get? Not a cent.
“That was a shocker,” Al McCoy, senior manager of WSF’s budget program, told Sun transportation reporter Ed Friedrich in a story printed today. “We don’t really have an explanation for that. We’re trying to find out why.”
WSF did recently receive $8.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds based on its size, but got nothing from the new fund for which it had to compete.
The state ferry system wanted $26 million to replace the Anacortes terminal and $9 million to fix up the Hyak ferry.
Michigan received the most money: $8.3 million. Maine got $6.8 million and New York pulled in $6.5 million.
Bainbridge Island requested about $11.3 million in project funding from President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan. Most of Bainbridge’s requests, which were submitted to the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council earlier this month, are for road repairs and non-motorized transportation improvements.
The project list is below…
