Gwillim

HOUGHTON – The Houghton County Jail Committee has been looking for potential funding sources for a new county jail, including the federal government.

At Monday’s committee meeting, Colin Gwillim, legislative assistant with Rep. Jack Bergman’s office, held a preliminary discussion with the committee regarding potential sources. Gwillim began by talking about what he called a Community Project Funding Process.

“In the Senate they call it Congressional and Directed Spending,” he said. “Essentially it’s the same process as used by the House where once a year members of Congress with both representatives and senators can submit projects for funding considerations to the appropriations committees here in the house and senate.”

Gwillim said funding typically comes from Community Facilities Programs, through the Rural Development Office under the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA).

USDA’s Community Facilities Programs offer direct loans, loan guarantees, and grants for public service buildings to improve the quality of life, develop, and sustain rural America.

“This can be anything from a hospital, a dentist office, a town hall, a community center,” Gwillim said, “but also included in there is for things like fire departments, police stations, prisons and jails, as well as police vehicles, fire trucks, and using them to things like that.”

Gwillim said once a year, members of Congress, both representatives and senators, can submit projects for funding consideration to appropriations committees in the House and Senate.

“Typically, we receive guidance from the Appropriations Committee in January or February, where they kind of lay out us, okay, these are types of projects that are available for funding,” Gwillim said.

“These are the guidelines for what the requirements and projects must mean in order to be eligible for federal funding, and they’ll send all of that to us kind of as it becomes available with them. As it becomes available to us, we’ll distribute it out to folks in the community who have expressed interest in potentially applying for the funding.”

Gwillim said project requests for funding amounts vary anywhere from $250,000 to $2 million and there is no particular restriction on the how much a project can request.

He cautioned the committee that projects requesting smaller amounts of funding typically have a better chance of receiving that full amount.

The Community Project Funding Process is competitive, said Gwillim, because there are many different entities in the district interested in the programs.