Rescue Plan money to fund lighting upgrades in Downtown Dennison
DENNISON (Feb. 24, 2022) – Village officials can begin moving forward with plans to use COVID relief money to upgrade the streetlights downtown.
Mayor Greg DiDonato says an attorney reviewed the village’s request to use Rescue Plan money to replace the ones along Grant Street from North 1st to the gazebo and determined that it’s a permitted use for the funding.
“It’s a legal expenditure because it deals with tourism. It deals with businesses, so it follows the criteria that has been set by the federal government of the usage of money. So that will now be applied to all the new street lighting for downtown Dennison.”
Council last week voted to put the unallocated portion of the $278,000 the village is getting toward the cause. DiDonato says that amounts to around $195,000 since they’re using about $38,000 to provide premium pay to safety forces members and $50,000 as the local match for a grant the village received to replace the storm sewers along Grant between the bridge and North Fourth.
“That four-hundred and forty-some thousand dollars, that will match that and that’s about a half-million-dollar project. And of course, that was the money that we got from the state of Ohio that it also came from the American Rescue Fund.”
DiDonato says the goal is to have both projects ready to bid out by the end of next year, which gives them time to try to secure additional funding to repave the rest of the street and repair its sidewalks where needed.