The Soldotna City Council passed a resolution that authorizes the City Manager to issue a request for proposals, soliciting grant writing consulting services for capital project priorities. It is anticipated that many of the priority projects including in the city’s adopted five-year Capital Improvement Plan will be eligible for grant funding, through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed into law in November 2021, provides a federal investment of more than $1 trillion that will be available through a variety of competitive and formula grant programs in the coming years. The bill includes $550 billion for new infrastructure projects from FY2022 to FY2026, including for roads, water and sewer utility projects, environmental remediation, public lands, and community resilience.
Soldotna City Mayor Paul Whitney,
“In speaking with the City Manager and looking through some of the material that has come through from the federal government, the grants that are available under the infrastructure bill, it became a little obvious that it’s very complicated. It would probably take someone on staff full time as an employee to wade through it. the booklet itself is in excess of 450 pages. So, it was thought that it would be best if we went out and looked for a specific grant writer that could professionally review all of these and start doing it.”
The city says that they want to be in the best possible position to benefit from this opportunity and, by doing so, they stated the need to increase capacity to both identify grant programs that fit the project priorities, and draft and submit competitive applications.