Colfax Village Board acknowledges problems with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for lagoon project
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — As part of wrapping up the Community Development Block Grant the village was awarded for the river bank stabilization project, the Colfax Village Board has approved a notice pertaining to the village’s response to the monitoring report.
The village must request the CDBG funds, and before the village can request the funds, a desktop monitoring of the project had to be conducted, said Lynn Niggemann, village administrator-clerk-treasurer, at the Colfax Village Board’s February 13 meeting.
The CDBG funds will go toward paying for the $2.6 million project to stabilize the Red Cedar River Bank so the river does not wash out the village’s wastewater treatment lagoons.
The original estimate for the project was $1.6 million.
The notice of approval of the desktop monitoring acknowledges that there were problems with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Niggemann said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to pay 65 percent of the project cost and the village was responsible for 35 percent of the cost.
In 2019, Colfax was awarded $592,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to cover the village’s 35 percent of the project.
The money from the Army Corps of Engineers is considered to be matching funds, so with the award of the $592,000 as CDBG funds, the only cost to the village for the $1.6 million project was expected to be $35,000 to $40,000 to CBS Squared for the grant application, grant administration and project oversight — until the bids came in at $2.6 million.
The village is hoping to receive a loan or a grant from the Clean Water Fund to cover the village’s additional cost associated with the project.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently recalculated the income eligibility of Colfax residents. People in the village are now considered to be low to moderate income, which qualified the village to apply for CDBG funds.
Documentation
The problem was in obtaining the documentation from the Army Corps of Engineers to identify contractors and the pay rate in the form that was required for the CDBG funds, Niggemann said.
There was so much redacted in the information from the Army Corps of Engineers that it was impossible to track what needed to be tracked, and the village had to request the information a second time, she said.
The notice of the desktop monitoring and the village board’s acknowledgment is the village’s promise to monitor more closely for future grants, Niggemann said.
After three conversations with the Army Corps of Engineers, they still would not provide the information in the format that was needed, she said.
What Niggemann said she learned from the situation is that she should have insisted that the Army Corps of Engineers sign off on what they needed to provide beforehand.
CBS Squared was hired to help apply for the CDBG funds and to help monitor the project. CBS Squared kept asking for the information, too, she said.
“The Army Corps of Engineers was uncooperative,” Niggemann said.
The letter that was received from the State of Wisconsin Department of Administration dated February 7 is the finding that the village is compliant with the terms of the CDBG funding, she said.
The $560,000 will now be paid to the village, Niggemann said.
Niggemann said the other piece of information she learned is that it is difficult to work with two federal agencies on funding.
The CDBG funds come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Army Corps of Engineers kept changing the people who were working on the Colfax project, too, said Rand Bates, director of public works.
There were four different people from the Army Corps of Engineers, Niggemann said.
And the Colfax project was not a priority for them, Bates said.
The Colfax Village Board unanimously accepted the desktop monitoring response approval letter dated February 7, 2023.
Contribution
In additional business at the February 13 meeting, the Colfax Village Board approved distributing the budgeted amount of $1,500 to the Colfax Youth Sports Corporation for the youth baseball program.
Several village board members questioned why the village was providing $1,500.
Niggemann said the contribution was related to the sale of the Whitetail golf course and that she had sent a request to the auditors for documentation on the fund and whether the $50,000 in the fund should decrease annually by the amount distributed.
According to the December 24, 1992, Colfax Messenger, the Colfax Village Board voted to accept the total financial proceeds of Colfax Sports and Recreation Inc. from the sale of the Whitetail in the amount of $50,000.
The amount is to be administered by the village in the form of a perpetual trust.
Colfax Sports and Recreation was originally formed to build the Whitetail Golf Course. Later the golf course was sold to Lyle and Janet Pelke.
Once a year, interest proceeds from the perpetual trust are distributed to the boys and girls softball associations in the four communities where most of the corporation’s members came from: Colfax (64.76 percent), Menomonie (20.48 percent), Elk Mound (7.14 percent) and Eau Claire (7.62 percent).
Other business
In other business, the Colfax Village Board:
Approved a bartender operator’s license for Molly Heidorn, Synergy Cooperative, from February 13 to June 30, 2023.
Approved permission for the use of the Colfax Municipal Building image at the Menomonie Heritage Museum and the Dunn County Historical Society in a “penny machine.” Visitors to the museum will be able to put their money into a machine and get a penny with the selected image on it, Niggemann explained.
Approved purchasing a new computer and monitor for the Department of Public Works. The existing computer was there when he started, Bates said, noting that he has worked for the village for 11 years.