BAY MINETTE – This fall, city officials could have an extra $450,000 to help deal with some long standing drainage issues.

The city of Bay Minette and North Baldwin Utilities pooled their resources and needs to apply for a Community Development Block Grant last week. If approved, the two entities would have three-quarters of a million dollars to spend before tax money would be used.

“We had some projects planned already in the Moran Street and East Hurricane Road area,” said NBU director Jason Padgett. “We already had $300,000 in planned upgrades. We’ll put in our share and that can be the matching money for the grant.”

By combining the city drainage projects with sewer, water and road repairs of NBU, the application will look much more appealing to the grant selection committee.

“The folks will also see that Bay Minette has almost 50 percent in matching funds already,” said Padgett. “We’re trying to put together the best application because it is a competitive process.”

Cities from across the country compete for the federal CDBG program.

The target area of the proposed work is E. Hurricane back to Old Daphne Road and over to Moran. Padgett said they would also be addressing all the deep ditches along Hurricane Road.

“This is a function of our drainage study,” said Bay Minette mayor Bob Wills. “This is one of the three priority areas.”

The work in the area would be widespread. While the city would be cleaning ditches and enlarging culverts to ease drainage woes, NBU crews would be upgrading water lines and replacing old sewer lines. The work should provide more water pressure for residents in the area.

Once the work is completed, the streets in the area will be replaced.

“There is no sense in paving a road knowing that we were going to have to come back and cut it later,” said Padgett. “We will make sure we both get all the work done and then pave the roads. And the cost of repaving the roads is written into the grant as well.”

The city approved the grant application Aug. 5 to meet the Aug. 19 deadline. Applications normally have a May deadline but the federal budget cuts known as sequestration delayed the process. Local officials hope to know whether or not they have been approved this fall.

If it is approved, the work would then go through an environmental impact study and engineers would begin the process of designing the project. Any work would not begin until next spring.