The stimulus dollars and you: Have you been touched by recovery money?

That injection meant some schools could keep a teacher one more year. It meant replacing a worn bridge and repaving some roads. It meant some families will have money to weatherize their homes.

Transportation dollars

Some of the biggest ticket items were road and bridge construction.

Six miles of replacing pavement for K-22 from the Woodbury County line to C-60 -- to be completed next spring -- will see $2.8 million in stimulus dollars to help cover the cost.

And the Highway 3 bridge just north of Westfield wasn't going to be replaced this year -- it wasn't in the state budget. But stimulus dollars paid for Iowa's portion, $1.8 million, for the project shared between Iowa and South Dakota.

Two road resurfacing projects in northern Plymouth County near Craig were completed this year, thanks to stimulus dollars to the tune of about $500,000.

In a time when state and county road budgets are tight, the dollars helped push projects through.

For low-income families

Mid-Sioux Opportunity, in Remsen, was allocated more than $1 million, spread through three years, to help low-income families weatherize their homes.

"We'll be able to do about 300 homes over that three year period," said Mid-Sioux Executive Director Dick Sievers.

In the past, the organization has only been able to help weatherize about 40 homes each year in the five-county area it serves.

Weatherization includes a scientific evaluation of the home to see where major air leaks are occurring. Usually insulation is added to the attic and sidewalls. The heating unit is inspected for efficient operation.

"If the household has older appliances we may be able to replace them as well with more energy efficient ones," SIevers said.

Mid-Sioux also received about $250,000 in a community services block grant to help with regional needs.

Mid-Sioux gave some of those dollars to Plains Area Mental Health to make sure low-income families could continue to be served there.

"Without this funding they would have had to reduce their service to people between 150-200 percent of the federal poverty level," Sievers said.

The block grant is also providing transportation vouchers so people like seniors can have rides on the Siouxland Regional Transit System (SRTS) to doctor appointments and the grocery store.

In addition, Mid-Sioux received about $60,000 in stimulus money for Early Head Start and Head Start, an education program for low income families.

"We have been able to upgrade some of our playgrounds with those funds and purchase a transportation vehicle," Sievers said. "We did some work in both Le Mars and Akron."

Sievers said he Mid-Sioux's application of the dollars was a warranted use of the federal recovery money.

"Regardless of whether people support the allocation of stimulus dollars or not, if we receive them, we want to make the best use of those dollars we can," he said.

The weatherization of homes will save energy and provide jobs to area contractors, he said.

The playground equipment for Head Start was purchased locally and installed by local workers.

Giving money to provide services through Plains Area Mental Health and SRTS helps those organizations, he added.

"We feel it's a good use of the money," Sievers said.

Money for the law

Two smaller chunks of stimulus dollars are filtering their way into Plymouth County law enforcement agencies.

The Plymouth County Sheriff's Dive Team will be receiving about $11,000 to buy a water rescue vessel to assist in their work.

The Le Mars Police Department is receiving about $20,000 to buy a generator for the police station.

"The generator we have now only covers part of the building," Police Chief Stu Dekkenga said. "The generator we'd buy would work for the entire building."

The Le Mars Police haven't seen any stimulus money yet.

"The process so far has been frustrating," Dekkenga said. "The applications and requirements to get federal money are almost mind-boggling."

Even though the department has received no stimulus money yet, Dekkenga still has to make quarterly financial reports to the government, including the two quarters before the application for money was accepted.

But the money should be coming soon, Dekkenga said.

Is a generator for a police station a worthy use of stimulus dollars? He thinks so.

"We're not hiring people, but it'll be about jobs wherever the generator is built. And it will give work to the local people who hook it up," Dekkenga explained. "Anybody who touches it will be affected."

$1 million for LCS

While stimulus dollars retained a few jobs at schools in Plymouth County, most superintendents agree the money was merely a patch -- and a thin one -- for a financially weak education system.

For the schools, stimulus money came in three categories: stabilization funds, Title 1 dollars and Special Education Part B money.

The "stabilization funds" were used to backfill for allowable growth dollars the state government had pledged earlier but cut due to a tight budget.

"I don't know what the state of Iowa would have done without the stimulus funding in education," Le Mars Community Schools Superintendent Dr. Todd Wendt said. "We would have seen another pretty drastic cut."

However, the money for Title 1 and special education allowed LCS to retain two employees that otherwise would have lost their jobs.

The Title 1 money gave the district the opportunity to shift an elementary classroom teacher to a Title 1 math position.

"It allowed us to keep a position for one of the people that would have been reduced for this year," Wendt said.

Title 1 is a federally funded program designed for remedial reading and math instruction for students in grades K-8.

The increased special education dollars included some that could be used for any general fund purpose, which allowed LCS to keep another person employed at the middle school to work with students on literacy skills, Wendt said.

"That's a classroom teacher that would have lost their job had we not had the stimulus money," Wendt said.

Other schools speak

Each Plymouth County school had different uses for the dollars.

Remsen-Union used the Title 1 dollars to help cover the salaries for the Title 1 teachers. The Title 1 program is ideally all government funded, but usually the dollars come up short, R-U Superintendent Ken Howard said.

That can mean asking for more from the local taxpayer's wallet. With the stimulus dollars, though, that shortfall was covered, at least for now.

R-U used the special education money to purchase touch screens for students with visual impairments and other technology to help students with extra needs -- technology the school couldn't afford otherwise, Howard said.

And the stabilization dollars helped preserve jobs that might have been cut if the school would have had to slash its budget because the state withdrew its allowable growth money, he said.

The Kingsley-Pierson School used the special education dollars to create a part-time paraprofessional job and the Title 1 dollars helped cover Title 1 salaries.

Hinton Community School added a half-time Title 1 position, which allowed a part-time employee to continue working at the school. The special education dollars freed up other money so a classroom teacher wouldn't be cut.

As far as future budgets go, Hinton Superintendent Larry Williams said schools probably won't know what to do until the very end of the Legislative session.

"The state is in a terrible situation and it's premature for me to even conjecture about it," Williams said. "We keep hearing forecasts from Des Moines that range from drastic to just terrible."

When the money runs out

Like Williams, other superintendents are looking ahead and seeing the injection of stimulus money ending.

And what they see isn't pretty.

While stabilization dollars filling in for the state's allowable growth money worked for now, those dollars are set to run out in 2011, Wendt said.

Add to that the fact the state's budget is looking even tighter than last year.

And when the stimulus dollars run out after the 2010-11 school year, the positions created with the money may be back on the chopping block.

"That will be a decision that will have to be made at that time," Wendt said of the two jobs created at LCS. "My guess right now is that (keeping those positions) is probably not likely, just because of the general condition of the state's economy and budget."

The money is proving to be more of a band-aid than a bridge for education dollars.

The jobs created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, at least at the schools, don't appear to be permanent.

"When the stimulus money is gone, unless things have turned around dramatically -- which they're probably not going to -- then that position will no longer exist," Wendt said. "Or at least it will be a decision point."