Voter approval of a $63.5 million bond is only part of the picture.
Some projects in a $63.5 million transportation bond issue could be pared by the time the state starts spending the money.
Transportation officials won’t decide on cuts until the spring, when matching federal dollars for transportation projects should become available.
“We have the biggest piece of the puzzle – federal funding – still missing,” said Greg Nadeau, communications director for the Maine Department of Transportation. “We’re going to be vague about what we will do until we have all of the pieces in place.”
Androscoggin County’s share of the bond would be about $30 million to pay for road, highway and bridge improvements around the county, support for bus systems in Lewiston-Auburn, Farmington and Lisbon and work at the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport. It also includes $530,000 for bicycle and pedestrian paths in Lewiston, Auburn and Livermore Falls.
Nadeau said projects from all over the state could still be dropped from the list. Legislators trimmed $15 million from the transportation bond before sending it on to voters but didn’t cut specific projects.
“There will be some shuffling of that list, but we won’t know what’s going to change until we hear from the federal government,” Nadeau said.
Many of the projects include federal, state and local money.
For example, the $900,000 in state bond money earmarked for the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport should be matched by $18 million from the Federal Aviation Administration. Most of the 26 highway improvement projects in the county will be paid with state, municipal and federal money.
Since the federal portion is so big, the state tailors the project list to get as much federal money as possible.
“And when we have a firm grip on the resources we’ll be getting, we know which projects we can kick out the door,” Nadeau said.
Congress isn’t scheduled to consider a transportation funding plan for several months.
“We won’t know until February what we’re getting, if we’re lucky,” Nadeau said. “And then, depending on what we get, we can begin to look at the projects we have listed and pay for as many as possible.”
Don Craig, director of the Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center, said most communities are simply biding their time waiting for a decision from the federal government.
“We expect, more or less, that we will get most of what we were supposed to get,” Craig said. “We have not been told that any one specific project is in danger.”
Those decisions won’t be known until spring, when most communities begin construction projects.
“We expect the Congress will begin working on it January,” Craig said. “It may delay a few things here and there, but we’re not expecting too much. If they haven’t passed a full transportation plan, we expect them at least to give us some money to carry through the year.”
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