HELENA — For organizations and municipalities, funds from the federal government may not be overly clear at this time.
Still, administrators with the City of Helena say we are in a better position than other local governments.
"The landscape of grants is changing beneath our feet," said Amanda Opitz, the grants administrator for the City of Helena. "Every single day, there's a different executive order or litigation that has tied up federal funds."
Opitz says Helena does not rely on federal funds for staff and more for projects.
"A lot of the grants that are in limbo are nice to have but not need to have," she said.
The city is receiving two grants from the United States Department of Transportation.
One is for a potential grade crossing at Montana Avenue and a possible redesign of 'malfunction junction,' which has been approved with the award amount of $3,200,000.
"It's been a priority for the city for many years," said Opitz. "We're encouraged that this first step is happening, but it's very much a first step: preliminary engineering [and] environmental review will then potentially get us to a design phase and an engineering phase."
The other is for a possible road that would connect the east side of the South Helena interchange to the area of the new Blue Cross Blue Shields building.
Opitz said, "We have a great partner that owns that land and is wanting to develop residential and commercial in that area. This would provide the road infrastructure for that development to manifest."
The $1,300,000 interchange grant is unclear to the city. They were awarded it from the US Department of Transportation's Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant program, which deals with infrastructure.
However, a kickoff meeting that was supposed to be held in January, was "postponed until further notice."
"We have yet to receive any information from our funder on that despite lots of requests," said Opitz.
She says most of the city's grant applications deal with infrastructure and safety.
"That seems to still be a priority, but everything is shifting," Opitz said. "We're trying our best to focus on what we have control over."
