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By Rebecca Dopp Levan Town was offered Community Block Grant (CIB) money for the purchase of water rights and aquifer recharge, but it wasn’t exactly what they were hoping for in terms of grant vs loan. “Our original request was 75% grant, 25% loan,” Jerry Spencer, mayor pro temper, said. “No one got what they asked for.” He said that CIB first offered 80% loan, 20% grant at 2.5% interest. Levan counter-offered saying they had already done the work for the recharge project, which was a pet-project for CIB. Spencer said that one of the commissioners on CIB is also on the board for the agri-park and he put in a good word for the town. “That water that the state has allocated, basically, Nephi can’t use it, Gunnison can’t use it, I think Mills can, possibly, but it has to be purchased here,” he said. In the end, Levan was offered a 60% loan, 40% grant, 30 years at 1.5% interest. Total would be $398,000 grant and $597,000 loan for 70 water rights and pay for the aquifer recharge project. Parker Vercimak, Jones and DeMille Engineering, has been helping with the project and said that they had attended a priority meeting and on October 1 CIB will do the funding meeting. “There’s probably not a lot of wiggle room in your guys’ case to plead for more grant at that meeting,” he said. Some towns and cities will try to go back and ask CIB to reconsider, he said. Spencer said that most of the projects were mostly loans. Vercimak said a few projects were turned away. He said that the town, at this point, needs to decide if the offer is acceptable, get through the October 1 meeting, and get the paperwork from CIB. They can always scale back the project if they need to in the future. “You are not obligated to spend all the money,” Vercimak said. He said that this was still an unprecedented opportunity for the town, there’s tremendous value at any cost, to purchase the water rights. “$25,000 a year for a loan payment is substantial, I get that,” he said. “You’ll have to look at your financials and see where it would come from for that.” He said that there will be public hearings and more opportunities for public comment in the future so the town is not obligated just yet. Vercimak said they are just going through the process. He also said that the town could recuperate some of the payments through impact fees and they would need to look at that at some point. “I appreciate your support there,” Spencer said. He noticed that out of the projects that were requested, most were for water or sewer, with a few road projects. “There just wasn’t enough money this year,” he said.
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