Mayor Kim Ecklund updates the City Council on the next steps for the state DRI funding as Councilman Tony Dolce, R-Ward 2, looks on. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

Two weeks ago the city of Jamestown received funding from the state totaling $10 million as a part of Round Nine of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, marking the second time the city has received this type of funding. Monday, Mayor Kim Ecklund updated the council on what comes next during the city council work session.

Ecklund said that they got the call the Tuesday before the announcement to be there that Friday without being told anything about what it was about. Ecklund added that the city is “very grateful” that both Jamestown and Falconer were awarded state funding, thanking City Development Director Crystal Surdyk and the rest of the team that worked on the DRI application. Jamestown’s application included 24 projects.

“Our office and the DOD have put out a few initial documents that were sent to us by the state, just to inform people about what the DRI process is, what the public’s role is, what your role will be, but I want to give you just a very brief overview,” Ecklund said. “We’ve had an initial contact with the state and received some initial documents we have to read. We have a city team of my office and Crystal as the core communicators with the state.”

From there, Ecklund said there will be a team inside city hall working on the DRI, mostly from the Department of Development, along with Director of Public Works Mark Roetzer. The city has been informed by the state that members of the state agencies involved in the process will be coming down to the city to visit and direct the city on the process in the coming weeks. The city has also been tasked with putting together a no more than 15 member planning committee, with distinct guidelines from the state. Ecklund noted that no one involved in the planning process and no elected officials can serve on this committee.

“They will basically be the sounding board for the process for the grants that will be approved or go through the process and work with the state, but ultimately the state chooses the final projects,” Ecklund said. “We do have a plan for obviously multiple meetings of the planning commission, but there will also be multiple public sessions, probably three to four is my guess, for the public to be engaged in the process as well.”

At this time, Ecklund said that is all of the specific information they have, though stringent guidelines are expected from the state. Councilman Tony Dolce, R-Ward 2, who also served Monday night as pro-temp city council president with current council president Councilwoman Regina Brackman, D-Ward 3, absent because of illness, noted that the projects would all be approved by the state and not come before council for approval. Ecklund said while the council would not have a voting role, they would still have a role, and encouraged council members to attend the public meetings.

“Right now we don’t really know any more than what we know,” Ecklund said. “I hope to find out in the next few weeks. I do believe it’s going to be fast and timely because we were the last region to be announced. We’re a little bit behind. We had a very quick turnaround for any submissions of things we had to submit for local planning commission members.”

Additionally, she said if someone wants to apply to be a part of the DRI funding who was not in the initial application they still can, but it is going to be a very quick turnaround for them. It was noted that not all 24 projects included in the application will be able to be done with the DRI funding, and that each project is in various stages of development, and work will continue on each one. The process will determine which projects are included in the DRI funding and able to move forward with help from this specific funding.