{"id":22809,"date":"2025-04-06T23:03:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T05:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/are-municipalities-in-montezuma-county-worried-about-federal-cuts-and-grant-money\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:18:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:18:00","slug":"are-municipalities-in-montezuma-county-worried-about-federal-cuts-and-grant-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/are-municipalities-in-montezuma-county-worried-about-federal-cuts-and-grant-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Are municipalities in Montezuma County worried about federal cuts and grant money?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"President
President Donald Trump. (AP Photo\/Mark Schiefelbein)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In light of the federal government scaling back its operations, The Journal<\/em> spoke with representatives from Cortez, Mancos and Dolores to see whether they feel federal dollars they may be expecting is threatened.<\/p>\n

Cortez<\/div>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way of knowing for sure, but our best educated guess is that we are safe,\u201d said Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders.<\/p>\n

Cortez has two grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation totaling over $1 million.<\/p>\n

One is the Safe Streets for All grant at $203,390, and the other is the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant at $825,300, said Grant Administrator Scott Baker.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth grants provide for essential public dialogue and collaboration, economic development analyses, and the technical engineering that enables Cortez to develop new construction and design plans for its road network,\u201d said Baker.<\/p>\n

Sanders said the USDOT grants have been awarded\u2013 \u201cIt does not mean we have that cash in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it means is that we can proceed with our grant program(s) and submit for reimbursements \u2026 up to the awarded amount,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n

Cortez will proceed with planned projects.<\/p>\n

Mancos<\/div>\n

Before January, the \u201cMancos Marshal\u2019s Office completed a couple of federal grants,\u201d said Mancos Mayor Cindy Simpson. \u201cThe recent federal policy changes had no impact on those.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, looking ahead, Simpson said the federal cuts may impact Mancos in the future since the town is \u201calways researching grant opportunities at the federal, state and regional levels for in-town improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall towns and cities rely on grants for many programs and facilities,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cWe hope the federal budget decision-makers see the benefits of and free up these vital grants soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolores<\/div>\n

The town of Dolores has received $120,000 of federal money for the engineering piece of its storm water project to get it \u201cshovel ready,\u201d said Town Manager Leigh Reeves.<\/p>\n

It has also received $750,000 of congressionally directed spending for the second phase of its water project that \u201ccould get cut,\u201d said Reeves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t know until the fall when we try to put the final package together for the water main replacement from First to Sixth Streets,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Reeves said that aids from U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet\u2019s offices \u201care telling us to move forward with things, but you don\u2019t know until the day you start.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the state level, Colorado is struggling to balance its budget, so the $1 million grant Dolores received from the Department of Local Affairs feels insecure, too, said Reeves.<\/p>\n

In fact, each year, the state usually awards funds from the Energy\/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund<\/a> in three cycles; this year, in light of budget balancing issues, it cut back to two cycles, said Reeves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say. We think we have the money,\u201d Reeves said. \u201cSo we just have to go with it and move forward. If the money gets pulled, we just won\u2019t be able to do the projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, the town could get a low-interest loan from the state to do it, since the projects \u2013 in Dolores, at least \u2013 have already been pushed off for the better part of 20 years, said Reeves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

promised money is cut, towns will have to postpone projects they\u2019ve already pushed off for decades, Dolores town manager says <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,44,28,83,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-dolores","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77864,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22809\/revisions\/77864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22809"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}