Plainfield's City Administrator Marc Dashield joins other local New Jersey officials in complaining that ARRA (federal stimulus money) dollars are not trickling down to local road repair projects (see here).
The bone of contention is roads wholly contained within a community.
This should come as no surprise considering Obama's stimulus plan drives the money to the states to parcel out, and New Jersey, like most states, has highway issues of its own to address that may or may not impact local street and road repairs.
In Plainfield's case, as I previously pointed out (see here), the question really is why Assemblyman Jerry Green hasn't muscled Plainfield into line for money -- at least for the South Avenue reconstruction project, since it is part of Route 28, the state highway that runs through most of the Assemblyman's district.
Part of the problem is that the roads money is subject to stiffer conditions than localities are used to, where most monies traditionally come through HUD's CDBG (Community Development Block Grants) program, whose criteria are notoriously subject to manipulation and evasion at the county level.
Among the conditions that towns like Plainfield would have to meet include having any environmental conditions addressed and permits in place. These real-life requirements cut through the smoke-and-mirrors of wish lists like that found on Plainfield's 'Stimulus' web pages (see here).
Speaking of which, do you even know how to find those web pages, let alone make sense of them?
As I pointed out when the subsite of the City's website was launched, the devil is in the details (see here). And that includes finding out what is going on with Plainfield's efforts to get ARRA stimulus funds.
Consider this: Plainfield's website no longer offers a site search capability, so you are on your own when trying to find pages not linked to by the menu in the left-hand column.
Once you find the pages (again, they are here), would you be surprised to learn they have not been updated since April 21st -- that is, when they were first put up? Online tools provide ways to discover how recently pages are updated, and you can verify my date by checking here.
You will not learn anything about Plainfield and the quest for ARRA stimulus dollars you did not know back in April by checking these pages, despite Mayor Robinson-Briggs' assertion on the pages themselves that --
...[o]ne of the purposes of this website is to provide a communication tool that will identify the funding opportunities available and the action taken by the City of Plainfield to secure funding. (Emphasis added.)So the surprise here is NOT that Plainfield isn't getting its share of the Stimulus money. Or that Assemblyman Green hasn't wrangled money for Route 28 improvements throughout his district. Or that the Robinson-Briggs administration hasn't kept its Stimulus web pages up to date.
No, the surprise here is that the Ledger prints Mr. Dashield's smoke-and-mirrors comment without any serious investigation into his assertions.
And what, exactly, Plainfield has done to merit any ARRA dollars for road repairs.
Good luck finding out from the city's own information.
Should that be a surprise?
- Ledger: "Towns complain federal road money falls short"
- Plainfield Today --
- City of Plainfield: "Stimulus-tracking web pages"
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