News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Northeast Michigan Material Management Authority President Cindy Johnson, left, addresses the Alpena County Board of Commissioners during its finance meeting on Tuesday.

ALPENA — A $2.7 million Congressional Directed Spending grant awarded to the local recycling program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture remains in the hands of the federal government.

However, the Alpena County Board of Commissioners took action during Tuesday’s Finance, Ways, and Means Committee meeting, which should free up the money soon.

The federal government approved the grant request about three years ago, and the money will be used to help cover the costs of construction of the $5.4 million recycling center slated to be built on Airport Road in Alpena.

The problem is, the federal government won’t release the funds to the Northeast Michigan Material Management Authority, which oversees recycling in Alpena County, because its name was not on the original application.

Alpena County made the funding request before NMMMA was formed, and now the federal government won’t release the funds unless the county includes the recycling group in a new application.

The new application is only for the release of the money and does not induce any reconsideration of the money, Alpena Mayor and NMMMA President Cindy Johnson said.

The commissioners voted 7-1 to submit a new application and add the NMMMA to it, so the money can be released.

Commissioner Brenda Founier was the only commissioner to vote in opposition to the move to add the authority so the funding can be released.

At the meeting, Johnson said if the county did not submit the amended application, the funding could be lost and the project would die. She said the NMMMA will provide oversight of the grant, and when the money is released, it will be deposited into a joint account with the county with other funds for the project.

Johnson said the authority has done everything in its power to get the federal government to release the funds directly to it, to no avail, and it became clear the county would have to resubmit an amended application to have the funds freed.

“We have worked for the last year and a half to get it into NMMMA’s name, and we’ve jumped through all of the hoops and provided all of the information that they needed and wanted, but the answer is still no,” she said. “They need a joint application, which is the same, but NMMMA is on it too.”

A large majority of the board agreed to submit the joint application, but Fournier said she could not get behind the request. She said in March, the county provided financial assurance for NMMMA for up to $1.6 million worth of 20-year bonds. Fournier was also against that request from the authority because she believed that, should something go wrong with the recycling program or recycling center, the county would be on the hook for them financially.

“The county has already stepped up, and now you want us to step up again,” she said. “I just can’t put that kind of pressure on the people of Alpena County or on us.”

Johnson reminded Fournier that the local recycling program is a county program and responsible for it. She said if the new application wasn’t submitted and the federal government took away the funding, it would spell the end of the project.

“If this doesn’t happen, this is done,” she said.

The commissioners asked Johnson if the county could just accept the money and then forward it to the NMMMA, but she said the money would only be deposited into an account that contains the balance of the money needed for the project. That account also has money with other grant funding and other contributions that were earmarked to NMMMA, including a $1 million grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, $500,000 from the county that came from its pot of money received from the America Rescue Plan Act, and other contributions.

The sale of the bonds will help cover the remaining costs of construction.

Johnson said the new submittal of the application would push the project back slightly, but not by much.

“I am hopeful that once we submit the application, we are able to move forward rather quickly so we can put out our bonds, put out our request for proposals, so we are ready to move and hopefully start construction in the summer,” she said.