By JANET KORAN NOWLAN
A journalist for five years in western
Illinois, she is presently attending
Northwestern University Law School. She
is a 1971 graduate of Knox College
One circuit rider for several small towns
Small town grantsmanship: Roadblocks and opportunities
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in federal
and state grants have become available
in recent years for municipalities which
qualify, and the larger cities have fared
well because they possess the know-how
to unravel the red tape involved in
claiming the money. But small towns
without full-time officials and no experts in grantsmanship are at a disadvantage—and Illinois has 1,116 municipalities with less than 10,000 population.
Now a legislator who lives on a farm
has taken an interest in the plight of
these towns. He is Rep. A. T.
McMaster (R.), who lives on a rural
route near Oneida (pop. 728) in Knox
County in western Illinois. McMaster
surveyed the problems of small towns in
his district, the 47th (Hancock, Henderson, Warren and McDonough counties
and parts of Henry and Knox counties)
in seeking grants and found that:
—Small towns and counties hear
about programs, but often hear of them
too late to apply, or hear of them only
in time to use the expertise of a planner,
which they can ill afford.
—Many communities which do meet
the application deadlines for grants
from the federal or state government
often find that their applications lack
adequate background information to
receive the needed federal or state
agency approval.
—Some local governments, in the
process of applying for sewer grants or
landfill permits, find that the rules of
the "grant-game" change in midstream.
When the village of Kirkwood (pop.
817) hired a consulting engineer to draw
up plans for a sewer project for the
town, the engineers had to spend several
months drawing up five separate sets
of plans in order to meet changing
guidelines.
—Other local government officials
have complained that they have taken it
upon themselves to apply for these
grants, but when asking for information
from the agency which is to make the
grant, "We can't get a straight answer
from anybody," complains Richard
Burgland, chairman of the board of
Knox County (pop. 61,280).
A 'circuit rider' to help
Tom McMaster knows local government after serving eight years as a
township assessor, four years on the
county board of (assessment) review,
and ten years on the Knox County
board of supervisors, four of them as
chairman. A member of the legislature
since 1971, he advanced proposals to
help the small towns through circuit-riding administrators, a hotline to the
state Department of Local Government
Affairs (DLGA), a talent bank, and
joint legislative service offices.
His bill creating a "hotline" (H.B.
2702) was placed on the House study
calendar, but the accompanying appropriation of $50,000 for the hotline
(H.B. 2701) passed the House but was
tabled in the Senate on the recommendation of the Appropriations Committee.
This setback has not daunted
McMaster. He is working with the
Western Illinois Rural Development
Project (an undertaking of the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension
Service) and Stewart Schrodt of DLGA
to establish a demonstration circuit
rider program in some rural counties in
western Illinois. The circuit rider will be
a professional who can regularly assist rural communities on a circuit or traveling basis.
|
His proposals are not new and untried. Communities in other states faced
with similar problems have supported
the idea of a circuit rider to be shared by
several communities in one general
area. In Illinois, Associated Municipal
Consultants, a private firm, is providing circuit administrator services to six
municipalities in the Champaign Urbana area.
The circuit rider idea is based on the
recognition that small towns are faced
with the same kind of urban problems
as larger cities, but because of a lack of
money to hire a full-time overseer, the
problems mainly get ignored or at best
treated on a very superficial, after-the-fact basis. One circuit rider could
provide adequate, day-to-day administrative aid to a group of small towns
which jointly participate in the program. By hiring a joint administrator
with city management background, a
group of communities could have the
kind of expertise they need, without
bankrupting their city coffers.
A hotline with the answers
The hotline to DLGA, as McMaster
envisions it, would involve a toll-free
number with an increase in DLGA's
Community Services Office staff to
provide answers to local government
questions. Each staff member (there
would probably be a total of six) would
|
|
374 / Illinois Issues / December 1975
be assigned an area of the state. Highest
priority would be given to small towns
with no staffs of their own. The hotline
would answer questions at once if possible or guide local officials to the appropriate contact in federal or state
agencies who could respond to a question, and generally provide liaison between local units and the federal and
state governments. DLGA was created
in 1969 for activities of this kind, but
getting the job done seems to be a matter of funding—and obviously little
towns are the low men on the political
totem pole.
Creating the talent bank would involve identifying public officials, state
university experts, etc., whose skills
could be used by local officials in
analyzing their problems. McMaster is
sure that the know-how is here in
Illinois, because the state's technical
resources are vast. Making the connection is the trick.
He would also like to see the four
legislators in each district (one senator,
three representatives) earmark some of
the money allowed for district office
and research expenses ($12,000 apiece
annually) for a joint legislative office to
aid small local governments. This office
could be staffed by a public administration specialist capable of helping with
red tape problems.
Small towns 'jump in'
Small town mayors welcome
McMaster's proposals. Mayor Robert
Anstine of Macomb (pop. 22,304) in
western Illinois says, "We in Macomb
have come to believe that we can't afford to ignore the opportunities in seeking grants." Mayor Harold Fitch of
Bushnell (pop. 3,703) is more explicit.
He says, "This sending our tax money
to Washington and back again is like
getting a blood transfusion in which you
take the blood out of the left arm and
put it back in the right arm, but losing
50 per cent in the process. We mayors
haven't known how to ask for the
money in the past, and it would be
valuable to have a person such as a circuit administrator to help several communities on a full-time basis." He says
that local governments with no staff can
still do a good job of administering tax
money, "certainly more efficiently than
the federal government. But since we
small towns can't change the system of
grants ourselves, we've decided to jump
in on our own and get our share."
December 1975 / Illinois Issues / 375