By Steven Spencer
Public comment is still being accepted by Calhoun County for the proposed purchase of a tug and barge using federal and state funding.
The proposed project would utilize a combined total of $1,079,000 from both the Federal Ferry Boat Program Funding and IDOT Local Project Funding.
The $1,079,000 would include vessel purchase, appraisal fees and associated administrative costs.
A total of $499,000 of the $1,079,000 would come from the federal funding and $580,000 from state funding.
As previously reported in the River County News, Calhoun County Engineer Kyle Godar explained at the June 8 Calhoun Commissioners meeting that he’s been looking at ways to spend the federally allocated money for several years and believes this project would allow the county to use the funds and no county tax dollars.
“Going on 10 years I’ve been looking at this and trying to figure out a way to spend it in a way that benefits the residents of Calhoun without putting an additional tax burden on the taxpayers,” Godar said at the June 8 meeting. “I think we have that here with a potential project. We’ve got state money, that’s basically our seed money to act as matching money, to purchase vessels with no direct Calhoun County taxpayer money involved in the purchase.”
“This funding is very highly controlled by Federal Highways and has a lot of intricate details about how it can be spent,” he added. “Everything that we get will come from IDOT. It will all be preauthorized by them before we ever spend a dime of anything.”
Comments and questions regarding the project and purchase can be submitted to the Calhoun County High Department via email at [email protected] or submitted to the Calhoun County Highway Department, Attn: Kyle Godar, 19465 Illinois River Road, Hardin, IL 62047.
