Winamac Town Council members approved a few different items related to the proposed downtown lighting and sidewalk upgrades when they met this week.
Back in March, The Indiana Department of Transportation announced that the Town of Winamac was awarded about $1.4 million for sidewalk improvements in the downtown area and the installation of lighting.
During her report Monday night, Clerk-Treasurer Melanie Berger presented members with an ordinance establishing a “downtown sidewalks and lighting fund”. The document was approved as presented.
Berger explained a certain amount of match money was set aside for the grant has been stored in the electric department’s fund up until now. Since the council approved establishing the fund, she’ll now be able to move the match of approximately $300,000 into this new account.
Clerk-Treasurer Berger also provided members with an invoice totaling $11,030 from Donahue and Associates.
She said this is for the engineering work that’s been done thus far and noted that matching funds could be utilized to pay it now and that a portion of it could be paid back at a later date.
She explained, “What we do with this grant is it’s reimbursable so when an invoice comes in, we submit the claim form to INDOT, they’ll reimburse us our percentage from that claim and then we make up the difference with our portion.”
Members voted unanimously to pay the invoice to Donahue and Associates.
It’s important to note that this project is still in the preliminary stages and construction and installation are pretty far down the line at this point in time. However, officials continue to take steps to move the process along.
