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Politics & Government

Fenton Wants Out of Federal Grant for Chrysler Site

Mayor says the grant project veers away from marketing the former auto manufacturing site and does not benefit the city.

A grant program originally devised to market the former Chrysler plant in Fenton has strayed so far from its original premise that the city no longer wants a part of it.

And it wants some of its money back too.

The Fenton Board of Aldermen gave preliminary reading Thursday to a bill that would withdraw the city from participation in a Section 209
Economic Adjustment Strategy Grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA).

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The city joined in the EDA program in 2009 with the St. Louis County Economic Council and the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Just before the bill was to have a vote for final approval, Ward 2 Alderman Joe Maurath requested the bill be held and sent to a committee for further study. Maurath sponsored the bill, which is expected to be discussed at the board's Sept. 1 committee meeting.

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The bill not only seeks Fenton's withdrawal from the grant project, but also seeks about $81,000 of Fenton's contribution that has not yet been spent.

Under the $2.1 million EDA grant, the city contributed 6.25 percent, or $131,250; St. Louis County contributed 6.25 percent, the state 12.5 percent, with the remaining 75 percent coming from the EDA. The grant was set to expire in October 2011.

However, Mayor Dennis J. Hancock said the St. Louis County Economic Council notified the city Tuesday of a revision to the plan that would extend it for another year. With only $323,000 of the original $2.4 million spent thus far, Hancock said the Economic Council's plan to extend it by another year and send the entire $2.1 million has no benefit for Fenton.

In remarks to the board before the bill's introduction, Douglas Rasmussen, senior vice president for Business Development for the St. Louis Economic Council, reminded the board the Council has been involved with the city for many years in trying to sustain the Chrysler plant while it was operating and in trying to market it once it closed. Rasmussen said it would be a “major setback if you all came out of the grant.”

Hancock, in his remarks before the bill's introduction, said the scope of work for the original EDA grant was to develop a strategic plan responding to the closure of the Chrysler plant and find a way to reuse the site. Now the Economic Council wants to add other, more regional projects that Hancock said were of no real benefit to the city of Fenton at all.

According to Hancock some of those projects include creating an “Asian Trade Desk to strengthen and broaden the World Trade Center-St. Louis' efforts to identify, guide and prepare companies to take advantage of export opportunities to Asian countries.”

“The projects outlined may very well be beneficial to the region, I'm not going to stand here and say they're not,” Hancock said. “I'm just not sure that the city of Fenton should pay.”

“To spend another $1.3 million on further study of things that don't directly relate to the (Chrysler) site I don't think was the purpose of the grant,” Hancock said. “The purpose of the grant was to focus on the redevelopment of the Chrysler site. It's not to establish an Asian Trade Desk and, unless it's made out of China, it seems like a lot of money to spend.”

“What get disconcerting about this kind of stuff is now we're looking at this money that is left over and now we're trying to figure out how to spend it, “ Hancock said. “Why don't we just send it back and send the right message for a change.”

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