Selection Process for ARRA Transportation Enhancement Projects

and 2009 Transportation Enhancement Projects

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will provide $15,410,762 in federal funding for transportation enhancement (TE) projects. TE projects are non-roadway type improvements such as sidewalks, lighting and landscaping. The ARRAfunds are 100% federal funds, requiring no local match, but the funds come with a “use-it-or–lose-it” condition. If the full amount available is not obligated by March 2, 2010, the amount of unobligated funds will be rescinded from the state. It will also cause the state to lose the opportunity to receive any redistribution of unobligated funds from other states. When it became apparent that the ARRA would provide funding forTE projects, ALDOT issued a notice of interest to the local cities and counties to solicit proposals for the use of these funds. By the March 13, 2009 deadline, ALDOT had received requests forfunding in excess of $140 million.

Prior to ARRA funding, ALDOT received and evaluated applications that were submitted for the regular 2009 transportation enhancement program which provides federal funds with an 80/20 match. With the arrival of 100% ARRA funds, many of the local sponsors that submitted 2009 program applications asked for consideration of the 100% ARRA funds. These projects had beenevaluated and ranked for merit based on standard program procedures.

ALDOTprepared a master list of selected projects based on the criteria stated below and advised the project sponsors that their project had been selected for TE funding under either the regular 2009 program or ARRA program. The 2009 program wouldprovide funds on an 80/20 matching basis and the ARRA program wouldprovide 100% federal funds. The projects that will receive 100% ARRA funds will be on a first come, first serve basis. In other words, the first $15,410,762 worth of projects submitted to ALDOT and determined to be complete, will be funded at 100% ARRA federal funds and the remaining projectswouldbe eligible for regular 80/20 funding. This strategy was designed to provide an incentive for local sponsors to submit completed project documents as quick as possible and reduce the risk of losing any money due to the March 2, 2010, obligation deadline.

The following criteriawere applied in the selection of projects:

  1. $15million was selected from the regular 2009 program list based on their ranking according to merit.
  2. The remaining eligible, but unselected, 2009 program projects were combined with the list of projects submitted in response to the availability of ARRA funds. This list was ranked from lowest cost to highest cost. Projects were selected starting with the lowest cost project and working toward higher cost projects until approximately $23.6 million had been selected. The reason for selecting projects in this manner was to spread the funding around to the most number of recipients as possible.
  3. Once a project was selected for a given sponsor, no other projects from the same sponsor were considered.
  4. Additionally, a project was selected for each of the nine cities over 50,000 population and at least one project was selected for every county for which an application was received. This increased the list of selected projects to about $40 million.
  5. Because of the time-sensitive nature of the ARRA program, projects that are known to require extra time to complete were eliminated from consideration.

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