NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson and Reno County Chamber CEO Debra Teufel told the Board of County Commissioners Tuesday that the project for which they set aside ARPA money isn't going to get help from the state, at least right now.
"It's related to some infrastructure and site development here in Reno County," Teufel said. "That is really as a response to some of the large RFPs that we're seeing for larger and larger industrial project requests that are coming in, requesting 150, 250, upwards of 500 acres. We, as a county, haven't really prepared a site like that, that we can truly say we have site control and infrastructure ready to go. There was a grant opportunity that the Department of Commerce and the state had released earlier this year called the BASE grant."
Reno County is not getting BASE grant funding. The Chamber just found out at the end of the day Monday.
"This is not a surprise," Teufel said. "We knew it was going to be a program that was way oversubscribed. We heard there are 440 applications that were submitted for a total of about $1.8 billion of requests and they only had $100 million in the pot to allocate."
Teufel still believes the project needs to happen. She could not disclose where the proposed site would be, as they are still working on land purchases and those purchases are subject to non-disclosure agreements, but it's safe to say that highway and rail access are both components of any competitive site in this day and age.
"In the letter that we got last night, it did say that they will keep our application on file," Teufel said. "I hope that they will. There's a SPARK Task Force at the state level that is allocating several hundred million dollars for different purposes. Maybe they can reallocate some of those funds. Perhaps that's a conversation we can have with some of our legislative representatives later this month."
The legislature returns to Topeka for its veto session April 25.