Pasadena Stimulus is designed to provide information regarding local projects financed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). On February 17, 2009 President Obama signed into law the ARRA. ARRA amounts to the largest one-time federal domestic spending program in the history of the United States, accompanied by a massive tax relief, both intended to stimulate the faltering economy.Thanks to sound financial management, conservative budgeting practices and a diverse local economy, Pasadena is not experiencing the degree of economic instability that many other cities are facing. However, the availability of the ARRA is definitely an asset that will contribute to the city’s speedy economic recovery and future growth.
New homes - some still under construction, others completed - for the Pueblo Nation in El Paso, TX
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded approximately $15 million in Recovery funds to build affordable housing for Native American and Native Alaskan communities.
The other projects are currently scheduled for completion by or before early 2011.
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Artist's rendition of the bridge that will span the Ohio River from Milton, KY and Madison, IN.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is using $27.5 billion in Recovery Act funds for road and bridge projects throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the territories. The projects, usually a mix of repairs and new construction, are primarily intended to address local traffic problems.
According to the DOT Federal Highway Administration, more than 40,000 miles of pavement across the United States have been improved since the Recovery Act became law in February 2009. Of the more than 13,000 Recovery Act-funded road projects across the country, more than 4,200 are completed and 7,300 are under way.
Here are just five of those projects:
Completing Interstate Expansion in Wisconsin
After years of being put on hold due to lack of funds, an expansion of I-94 in Madison, Wisconsin is now under way and will be completed as a result of a $43 million in Recovery award from DOT. To relieve congestion four lanes will be expanded to six between I-94’s interchange with Interstate 39/90 and where Highway N crosses I-94. An estimated 58,000 vehicles travel this stretch of highway each day.
The project, the second largest Recovery funded highway project in the state, is now in its second phase and is scheduled to be completed in 2011. The westbound lanes and bridges were completed in September 2010. State officials had planned as far back as 2000 to expand I-94 but lacked funding prior to passage of the Recovery Act.
Dangerous Route in New Mexico
U.S. 491, the primary north-south highway in rural northwest New Mexico, connects the Navajo Nation to emergency, medical, educational, and other nearby vital services. According to state data, the fatality rate on the north portion of the corridor is about 3.6 times higher than the state average and about 2.2 times higher than the south portion. Traffic on this major trucking route has been increasing every year.
DOT awarded a $31 million Recovery grant to pay for constructing two new lanes that will separate north- and south-bound traffic along approximately 70 miles of U.S. 491. Additional safety improvements will include constructing new lanes for acceleration and deceleration in commercial and high-traffic areas.
New Bridge over Ohio River
A $20 million Recovery award from DOT is funding construction of a bridge to replace the 81-year-old bridge that currently spans the Ohio River between Milton, Kentucky and Madison, Indiana – two economically distressed communities. By widening the road deck to 40 feet and including 5-foot sidewalks, officials hope to increase traffic and eventually commerce in the two areas. An estimated 10,700 vehicles cross the bridge daily.
Officials expect the new Milton-Madison bridge will be completed in late 2012.
Relieving Interchange on southern Border
A heavily congested interchange just south of San Diego along the U.S. border with Mexico is the target of $20.2 million in Recovery funds from DOT. The money will pay for improvements to relieve congestion from commercial trucks that are either off-loading or receiving railroad shipment containers.
The Otay Mesa port-of-entry accounts for an estimated 1.4 million trucks passing through the area each year and about $31 billion worth of goods. The improvements involve expanding the loading area so that local traffic is no longer delayed by trucks backed up at the Otay Mesa entrance. DOT also expects a significant reduction in pollutant emissions since truckers tend to leave engines running while waiting.
Building Bypass in Arkansas
Planned Highway 71 bypass in Northwest Arkansas.
DOT awarded the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department $10 million in Recovery funds to complete construction of a four-lane interstate bypass and access road on Highway 71 in the upper-northwest part of the state. The 19-mile bypass will stretch from Bella Vista to Pineville, Missouri, just across the state line.
The project also includes construction of a 2.5 mile two-lane access road between Highway 72 and Highway 279 in the Bella Vista area. State officials expect the new work will not only separate through-traffic from commercial traffic in and around Bella Vista, but also improve the movement of goods in transit to the Great Lakes and Canada.
Workers completed the last phase of nuclear waste cleanup at the Nuclear Radiation Development site near Grand Island, New York, and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.
Last summer a total of four truckloads – three from Nuclear Radiation Development, one from Berkeley –of soil, sludge, tools, rags, and protective clothing contaminated with radioactive elements was driven to a Department of Energy (DOE) disposal site outside Carlsbad, New Mexico. Encased in steel drums, the waste was then placed in storage facilities more than 2,000 feet below ground. Costs were covered by $172 million in Recovery funding.
About the same time, DOE and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions supervised the sealing of two decommissioned reactors at the historic Savannah River Site in South Carolina. During the 1950s, the site played a leading role in nuclear weapons manufacturing that produced tritium and plutonium-239. The sealed reactors were the two oldest of five decommissioned reactors on the site. The remaining three will be sealed at a later date.
Before the doors of one reactor were welded shut, officials placed inside a time capsule containing items depicting the history of the site and showing current events in the region and the nation. Items ranged from documents recording the decommissioning process for the reactors to a copy of People magazine featuring the royal wedding in Britain.
The two reactors are expected to stay in their present states for 1,400 years.
Since the 1990s, the Department of Energy has been working to treat and remove contamination on the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site. Recovery funds totaling $1.6 billion are allowing DOE to accelerate the Savannah River Site efforts.
More on DOE’s Recovery funded cleanup activities
The Department of Energy completed weatherizing more than 600,000 low income homes three months ahead of schedule.
With $5 billion in Recovery money to add to its ongoing Weatherization Assistance Program, DOE focused on quickly reducing energy waste in low income homes by installing upgrades such as insulation, air-sealing, and more efficient heating and cooling systems. The goal was to weatherize 607,000 homes by March 2012.
DOE announced it had reached that goal in December 2011.
“On average, the program reduces energy consumption for low-income families by up to 35 percent, saving them more than $400 on their heating and cooling bills in the first year alone,” DOE said. “Nationwide, the weatherization of 600,000 homes is estimated to save more than $320 million in energy costs in just the first year.”
Estimates from an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study in March 2010 projected that energy savings will likely exceed the program’s costs.
The extra Recovery funding significantly expanded and accelerated DOE weatherization activity. For example:
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently issued four final Recovery grants for two programs intended to promote the development and use of electronic health care records (EHR, sometimes referred to as electronic medical records or EMR). Recovery grants for Regional Extension Centers now total 62, up from 60; grants for Beacon Community Cooperative Agreements now total 17, up from 15.
The Recovery Act includes a provision “to improve American health care delivery and patient care through an unprecedented investment in health information technology.” Completely separate from the health care legislation that Congress passed last March, the provision in the Act focuses primarily on facilitating wide deployment of EHR among health care administrators and providers across the country.
According to HHS, broad use of health IT – particularly EHR – has the potential to improve the quality of health care, prevent medical errors, increase efficiency of care, reduce unnecessary health care costs, increase administrative efficiencies, decrease paperwork, and expand access to affordable care.
HHS has developed nine Recovery grant programs intended to build the foundation for the interconnected EHR system. The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is supervising the programs, which, as a whole, represent $2 billion in Recovery funds devoted to establishing both a nationwide EHR system and a new workforce to be trained in health IT by 2014.
Regional Extension Centers
ONC has awarded Regional Extension Center (REC) grants totaling almost $653 million in Recovery funds that are now beginning to be distributed to nonprofit healthcare-related institutions, some specifically created to be Regional Extension Centers. The mission of these Centers will be to counsel and assist local doctors, nurses, lab technicians, pharmacists, and other providers on how best to develop and use EHR. The grants are intended to cover operating costs for the first four years, after which the centers are expected to be self-sustaining through state and private revenue sources. Collectively, Regional Extension Centers are expected to support upward of 100,000 primary-care providers nationwide.
As a result of a $28.5 million grant and $17.9 million in state funds, the Ohio Health Information Partnership was established by the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio Osteopathic Association, the Ohio State Medical Association, BioOhio, and a number of related state agencies. The partnership is a collaboration between nonprofit and state officials in Columbus and will be one of two Regional Extension Centers focusing on health IT in general and Electronic Health Records in particular in Ohio.
The nonprofit healthcare-policy agency Quality Insights of Pennsylvania (QIP) focuses on helping state healthcare providers improve Medicare services. QIP, which has offices in Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and King of Prussia, received $44 million in grants to become the sole Regional Extension Center in the Keystone State.
The final two REC award recipients: CalOptima Foundation, covering Orange County, CA, and Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, covering the state of New Hamshire.
Beacon Community Cooperative Agreements
The Beacon Community grant program is intended to help communities increase health care quality and efficiency, and thus become “beacons” of health care in their regions. The grants underwrite agreements between HHS’ National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and local health organizations that will work with hospitals, clinicians, and patients to effectively use and benefit from EHR.
For instance, Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS), a nonprofit organization in Spokane, Washington, was awarded a $15.7 million Beacon Community grant specifically to improve quality and efficiency of care for diabetics in a 16-county, mostly rural region of eastern Washington and western Idaho. To achieve this, INHS will use health IT to:
Fifteen Beacon grants were awarded in May 2010, totaling $220 million. The final two grant recipients: Greater Cincinnati HealthBridge, Inc., in Ohio, and Southeastern Michigan Helath Assn. in Detroit. Beacon grants now total $250 million.
All Regional Extension Center Grants
All Beacon Community Grants
Details on all HHS/ONC Health IT programs
Local authorities in Atlanta have warned area senior citizens to beware a possible identify theft scam purporting to be part of the stimulus program.
Officials of Fulton County put out the alert after seeing application forms to receive a $500 check from the federal government under the “American Opportunities Stimulus Money” program. No such program exists.
The forms were being handed out to senior citizens outside the Atlanta office of the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, according to local news reports. National Action Network said it was not associated with the application or with the two people who were distributing copies to senior citizens.
The form instructs applicants to provide name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number to receive a $500 check. While authorities have not yet found any evidence that identities were stolen, they have warned against filling out the forms.
Using $750 million in Recovery funding, the Department of the Interior’s National Park Service is underwriting approximately 800 different maintenance and rehab projects at nearly 400 national parks and monuments around the country. The Department of Agriculture’s National Forest Service similarly received $63 million for improvements needed at some visitor centers, which serve as information hubs for respective national forests and parks.
Furnace Creek Visitor Center – Death Valley National Park, California
The same heating and cooling units originally installed 50 years ago when this visitor center was built were barely operating when officials began renovations in November 2010. Insulation in the brick walls and single-pane windows had decayed and no longer kept out the summer heat or winter cold.
Improvements funded by $1.1 million of Recovery contracts include new solar panels, wall and ceiling insulation, thermo-pane windows, and energy efficient HVAC systems, all of which are expected to reduce the center’s energy bill by as much as $14,000 a year. Exhibits will be updated, and a new introductory film incorporating recently learned information and facts about Death Valley is being made.
All work is expected to be complete by spring of 2012.
Quarry Visitor Center and Quarry Exhibit Hall – Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado
The Dinosaur National Monument in southern Colorado received $13.1 million to rehab two ageing facilities, the Quarry Visitor Center and Quarry Exhibit Hall. Both structures are located at the world-renowned Carnegie Quarry, which contains almost 1,500 dinosaur bones dating back 149 million years to the Jurassic Period.
Deferred maintenance had caused both facilities to fall into disrepair, even requiring partial demolition of the visitor center. According to a 2008 Department of the Interior Inspector General report, the facilities were “literally falling apart.” But after 18 months of renovation work, the two buildings recently reopened.
The 7,600-square-foot Quarry Visitor Center includes a theater and a bookstore. The 10,500-square-foot, steel-and-glass Quarry Exhibit Hall is built into a cliff face that has dinosaur bones embedded in the rock, creating the extremely popular “Fossil Wall.” The facility includes exhibits and displays about dinosaurs and other life from the Jurassic era.
Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center – Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Opening in 1962, the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in the Tongass National Forest near Juneau was the first visitor center built by the National Forest Service. Recently renovated with $1.6 million in Recovery funds, the facility’s improvements include upgrades to audio-visual equipment and interpretive displays as well as the installation of energy-efficient lighting and climate-control systems.
Also, portions of nearby trails were rerouted to meet accessibility standards with a ramp and observation platform.
The Mendenhall Center attracts more than 400,000 visitors each year. Back to Featured Stories
The Office of Tax Analysis estimates that, as of December 2011, $299.8 billion in tax benefits has been made available. The benefits come in various forms including the Making Work Pay tax credit, COBRA Continuation Coverage Assistance, and tax incentives for businesses.