City rushing to seek its share of stimulus fund

The city of Mountain Home will be putting in a bid for at least $750,000 in federal economic stimulus money.

The money would be used primarily for street repair.

At the recent Black History Banquet Lt. Gov. Brad Little told Mayor Tom Rist that cities and counties should move rapidly to put together packages requesting the stimulus money. A March 4 deadline has been set by Gov. Butch Otter for "shovel ready" requests for the money, which amounts to about $1 billion for the entire state of Idaho.

Like Otter, Mayor Rist doesn't want to use the money for anything other than "one time" projects. "We didn't want anything that would commit us down the road to any extra expenses," Rist said, such as programs or additional jobs that the city would still have to pay for once the stimulus money was gone. "We'll only use it for one-time projects. We're not going to use it for ongoing programs that, when the money goes away, leaves us in a bigger budget crisis than we're already facing."See the mountainhomenews for the complete story.