Last week, town Supervisor Dave Plavchak announced that Lloyd has received a long-awaited grant that will be used to bury the utility lines in the hamlet. He said not only will this improve the aesthetics in the hamlet but it will ensure that business will not lose power in a storm.

 

Plavchak said this grant is being broken into two phases – the first phase is for $135,000, with a federal share of $121,500, that is to be used to complete the final planning for the project. He said the second part of the grant, “is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] would provide funding of $1,009,800 for this phase, and when adding in the federal share, brings the total to $1,131,300 and the match for the town of $125,000.”

 

Plavchak said Lloyd received a second grant of $892,000 for a generator at the pump station by the [Hudson] river. He noted that the federal share is $802,000 and the required non-federal matching share is $90,000. He said the town now has to begin the design work for this new generator.

 

Plavchak said these grants were obtained through FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security. He pointed out that it took nearly two years to receive these grants because the town had not completed their 2016 Hazard Mitigation Plan. He said Lloyd joined Ulster County’s Plan in early 2023 and he put himself on the steering committee, “so I could show that the Town of Lloyd was really going to focus and get it [plan] done.” He said Councilman John Fraino reached out to all town department heads to gather data that was then submitted to the county.  

 

“We are now part of that Hazard Mitigation Plan for the county, which right now is in FEMA’s hands and should close within the next 60 days. That is what made us eligible for these grants,” he said.

 

Plavchak calculated that these two grants total $2 million.

 

“I think it’s fantastic news for the town and it helps us with resiliency and handles some of our hazard mitigation. A lot of grants are 60% and the town has to match the other 40%, but the good thing about the FEMA grants is they’re 90% and our town matches 10%.” He reminded the board that the town allocated some of the American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA] funding towards matching grants, “so we don’t have to budget for the match because we had already planned ahead for that, so I think it’s good news.”

 

Plavchak said he is going to try to tie burying the utility lines into the town’s Street Scape Plan, “because you’ll have the sidewalks torn up. The scope of the project is on Main Street from Vineyard Avenue to Church Street and then it’s going behind Vineyard from Milton Avenue down to Main Street; that’s what this grant will cover.”

Plavchak said Peter Christiano, of Barton & Loguidice, will be attending the June 5th board meeting, “to update us on the street scape project because we haven’t focused on that in the last five months other than some signage questions. We’ll have to talk to him about how this grant fits in with that and how we can coordinate both.”