No timetable for local beach projects yet

By M. Patricia Titus
Staff Reporter

“Congress has made it clear they do not want (the Army Corps of Engineers) to do continuing contract clauses anymore,” Pratt said Tuesday after a meeting with Corps representatives to discuss the projects.

What has been standard practice for the Corps for many years may be curtailed under detailed language in the 2006 funding bill. Continuing contract clauses have allowed funding from one fiscal year to be applied to a larger multi-year project and related contracts, so that work can begin earlier, with only initial funding and in anticipation of funding in future fiscal years.

The U.S. Congress, however, has made their dislike of the practice — and the related “reprogramming” of funding from one project to another — very clear. But this was the first budgetary year in which the practices were officially on the chopping block when all was said and done.

Exactly how the change will impact the Delaware projects and their $3 million in federal funding remains to be seen, Pratt noted.

“We’re not sure it’s hard-and-fast. … A week ago, it seemed hard-and-fast,” Pratt said of the new rules as Corps personnel had described it to him and of what he had recently told local officials, including Sen. George Howard Bunting. “Now, I’m not sure it is hard-and-fast.”

That perspective came Tuesday, as Pratt returned from his latest meeting with the Corps. “It may not be hard-and-fast,” he allowed.

Pratt said the Corps is still looking into the details of the language to see exactly what it would mean for continuing contract clauses and the Delaware projects specifically. “It’s a pretty lengthy bill,” he emphasized.

The bottom line is that the $3 million in funding and the timetable for its use will have to be handled very carefully and with an eye toward the future.

With a continuing contract clause, the work could be contracted to begin at any time — but likely still would not begin until the fall of 2006, due to scheduling and pre-construction work. It would begin with $3 million as a starting pot (plus state funds in a 65:35 ratio), in anticipation of additional funds coming in the federal budget for the 2007 fiscal year. The work would then continue across the fiscal year-end mark of Sept. 30, 2006, and into October of 2007, until finished.

That’s the model followed in the previous Delaware beach reconstruction projects, including the one nearing completion in neighboring Fenwick Island. That project was largely funded in the 2005 budget, with completing funds provided in the 2006 budget that also allotted the $3 million in federal funding to get Bethany-South Bethany construction started.

Without a continuing contract clause, work on the joint project area could still begin at any time — again, likely not until August or September of 2006. But the contract for that work would simply cease on Oct. 1, 2006. Any portion of the $3 million in federal money not spent as of that date would simply be gone.

A new contract, with funding from the 2007 budget, could pick up where the first contract left off, but that division could potentially cause delays and other complications with scheduling and overall costs. It’s a least-desirable circumstance, since it also leaves open the issue of whether any funding would be forthcoming at all and whether the project would be completed — and, if so, when and with what funding — in that case.

The main alternative without continuing contract clauses is to seek to have the $3 million in federal funds in the 2006 budget carried over into the 2007 fiscal year and added to any funds in that year’s budget. That would mean an Oct. 1, 2006 start, at the soonest, with one contract for the whole project year and the total funding amount.

However, it is also still unclear whether that option would be permitted by Congress and the Corps’ new set of operating rules.

But Pratt was hopeful about the idea, should continuing contract clauses be eliminated.

“That is very much the option for us right now. It would mean the difference between a September start and an October start,” he said of the notion of carrying the funding over to the 2007 fiscal year.

In the end, state and local officials will have to wait the situation out, much as they did with the 2006 funding.

“We’ll have to see how the budget process unfolds,” Pratt said of the federal budget for the 2007 fiscal year. “The president’s budget proposal is usually announced February 1.”

Notably, funding for any beach reconstruction projects has generally been entirely absent under proposed budgets from both President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton. Once announced, the proposed funding would go to committees that designate actual starting points for each year’s Energy and Water bill, wherein funding can be – and often is – added by legislators.

“We should know by late spring what the committee reports are looking like for Energy and Water,” Pratt said. “Then we’ll know whether to try to get started in September.”

No matter what the end result of the language in the 2006 funding bill is determined to be, “There are some options out there for us,” Pratt emphasized.

Pratt will be keeping in touch with Corps officials as they wrangle with the legislators’ language on funding, as well as the future of funding in the federal budget.