Planning grant for Glade water is approved

Members of the facilities subcommittee were reminded March 24 that a planning grant has been approved to help with the water and sewer system at Glade Creek School.

The subcommittee consists of Superintendent Jeff Cox, Alleghany County Schools Maintenance Director Mike Edwards and Board of Education members Betsy Dillon and Faron Atwood and County Manager Don Adams and Commissioners Doug Murphy and Randy Miller. Adams told the subcommittee he has made contact with the grantors and at any time, he can acquire the services of an engineer. "I asked for a timeline of next year's grants coming in," said Adams. "They're unable to give it to me because they've asked the legislature for $50 million and the governor has (given) $10 million in regards to water and sewer to the Rural Center. I think we're still on the timeline of trying to get something together by June or July. Let's just say it's an $800,000 water and sewer, we're going to ask for $400,000. We're going to have to ask them to go against their normal time frames anyway, so I think that's what they were expecting from us.

"They're not going to hold us to some October application deadline if we've got to move faster than that," added Adams. "They will receive early applications and things of that nature."

When Murphy asked Cox what he had learned during a superintendent meeting in Raleigh, he commented he mentioned to Adams that he had spoken with Ben Matthews, a contact at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction who oversees Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB) funding. Cox said that Matthews relayed to him "that we need to be checking with our county managers and having them follow up on some USDA rural education grants that are for capital projects, and it is grant funding. It wasn't a loan, it wasn't anything that's paid back; it's just money. He was saying it was millions. How many million and how that's spread across how many states, I don't know. He acted like it was definitely something we need to be pursuing. I talked with Don and he's already made contact with his regional person who would be in charge of those kinds of things."

Adams reported, "At this point, from a regional strategy standpoint—it's not a USDA representative saying this, it's statewide superintendents—our regional reps have no idea…how much statewide grant funds we're talking about. They give grant funds annually.