HERMANN – At a County Commission session early this month, County Clerk Lesa Lietzow noted a move by Treasurer Mike Feagan that didn’t elicit a response and went largely unnoticed by those in the audience: “Mike has set up an account for the CDBG.”

She was referring to the Community Development Bloc Grant (CDBG) of $750,000 that officially is the county’s grant that will be used to help fund the wastewater treatment upgrade at Public Water Supply District 1, which serves the Peaceful Valley subdivision near Owensville. Setting up the account is key to the start of what will be, for Lietzow and Feagan, a paperwork-heavy project and a test to the county clerk’s staff’s filing skills.

At an informational meeting with representatives of the state and federal agencies involved in financing the $2.7-million project, county government officials were given plenty of notice to brace for a lot of paperwork. Juliana Kleithermes of the Missouri Department of Economic Development (DED), which obtained the grant that was applied for by Gasconade County government, had a brief and to-the-point message for county officials. 

“Document everything,” she said.

“This is a really big project, $2.7 million,” Kleithermes said of the wastewater treatment upgrade being pushed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR). That state agency in recent years has focused much of its efforts on having local governments upgrade their treatment facilities. For most smaller communities and agencies such as PWSD No. 1, grants — and loans that will be paid back through user fees — are the only way the DNR mandates can be achieved.

In the case of the PWSD 1 project, the CDBG money is being added to a $1-million loan obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Mike Hartman of the USDA was on hand for the Commission session.

“We want to see this project move quickly,” he said. “Things are moving along. I see it being on schedule.”

That schedule calls for the project, being designed by David Van Leer of Cochran Engineering, being put for bids by the end of this year with construction to begin shortly after the start of 2023. The DED’s goal is to have sufficient competition among contractors for the project.

“We ask that there are always at least three bidders,” Kleithermes said.

If the project moves as quickly as local officials hope, the paperwork will start flowing fairly soon with the expenditure of the grant and loan money. And that’s why Kleithermes and several other DED staffers attending the session presented Lietzow and other county officials with a multi-page “New Grantee Orientation” document — no doubt the first of those documents associated with this project to be filed.

Kleithermes said the $750,000 grant is from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development agency. And that agency, she pointed out, is particular about how its dollars are used.

“That’s why I said documentation is key,” she told Lietzow, who, as county clerk, is the chief records keeper of county government. 

“You’ve got a lot of funding sources,” Kleithermes said. “That’s why  you document everything. If HUD comes and you don’t have that documentation, they’ll take that money back.”

The funding agencies also are particular about the way funds are obtained to pay the bills on the project. For instance, when the contractor requests a draw on the funds, a panel of three county government officials must formally file a request for the money. The agencies then will place the money into the account set up by Feagan. Another set of county officials — different from the one requesting the funds — will sign the check that is written to meet the contractor’s request.

The agencies also aren’t big on having the money sit in the county’s account too long.

“Once you have it deposited into your account, you have three days” to write the check, Kleithermes said. 

There is another part of the project that might prove as challenging as the document-filing task that lies ahead — meeting the goal for low- to moderate-income workers on the project. The goal is to have about 25 percent of the total amount of funding spent on Section 3 workers, but Amy Werner of the DED acknowledged that the goal might be too high for projects in this part of the state.

“Our main Section 3 workers tend to be more (in) St. Louis or Kansas City,” Werner said.

Trying to meet the goal on Section 3 workers rests on the contractor, not the county.

“Getting contractors trained on the new Section 3 will take time,” Werner said, adding that a key factor in moving along the project will be the hiring of the low- to  moderate-income workers or the contractor showing a major effort to locate those workers.

Donald Burrows and Mike Garlock represented PWSD 1 at the Commission session. The treatment facility upgrade will include an oxidation ditch with a design flow of 80,000 gallons per day with an ultraviolet disinfection system.

PWSD No. 1 serves 183 households in the lake community.