Paving work on Wabash Avenue in Chesterton, Oak Hill Road in Porter, and Meridian Road in Liberty Township are among the Duneland-area projects that so far have made the cut for funding through the nation’s $780 billion economic stimulus package.

The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission’s Executive Board on Thursday unanimously approved a list of 123 regional projects totaling $45.1 million proposed for funding through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act.

Now it’s the public’s turn to comment on the projects that NIRPC will forward to the state seeking a share of the $742 million in stimulus funds coming to Indiana for transportation-related projects. The list exceeds the available funds for this region by about $3 million and will need to be pared down more. The public comment period will continue through April 21.

NIRPC’s list was developed over the course of several recent meetings after NIRPC asked county and municipal officials to present their priority projects for funding. Originally, more than $800 million worth of projects were requested from communities in Northwest Indiana, far above the $42 million that will be available to the region.

The list must still be approved by the Indiana Department of Transportation. The breakdown is as follows:

In the road category, 42 projects totaling just under $16 million are in Lake County; 24 projects totaling $4.9 million are in Porter County; and nine projects totaling $2.5 million are in LaPorte County.

More specifically, Chesterton has three of its five requested projects on the list, Porter got four out of 20 it originally requested, and Porter County got three of 13 projects in the unincorporated areas. Neither Burns Harbor nor Dune Acres has any projects on the list.

In the transit category, 27 projects totaling $6 million are in Lake County; 10 totaling $613,000 are in Porter; and seven totaling $1.2 million are in LaPorte County. Three other projects totaling about $7.5 million are in multiple jurisdictions.

In Porter County, the transit projects include computer and office equipment for the Porter County Aging and Community Services, training for Opportunity Enterprises, and a new van for Valparaiso.

In Lake County, the projects include $2 million for seven new buses for Gary’s service and nearly $1 million in operating subsidies for the Hammond bus service.

In addition to the road and transit projects, another $6.4 million will go to the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District for signal and power system upgrades along its South Shore commuter service.

The list presented to the NIRPC Executive Board originally included four drainage projects in Lake County as contingency projects that could get funded if other projects were disqualified, but board member and Lake County Surveyor George Van Til successfully added the $750,000 to the main list. Van Til said he attended all but one of NIRPC’s meetings on the stimulus funding, and it was at that meeting that his top priority projects got axed despite some significant drainage problems.

The executive board unanimously agreed to add those projects Van Til sought boosting the total list to just over $45 million. NIRPC Planner Gary Evers said that not all projects will win INDOT approval, so the list should have enough flexibility to allow additional projects.

Evers said the road projects have to meet very specific criteria in order to qualify for the federal stimulus funds. The roads can’t be less than eight years old, nor can they be in dire condition.

“It’s got to be, as Goldilocks would say, ‘just right,’” he said.

He noted that each community or agency was asked to rank their projects they submitted. If INDOT rejects any projects now on the list, another project will be bumped in its place. Because each community or agency ranked their projects that they submitted, it is likely that the projects with lower rankings will be the first to be eliminated if INDOT rejects any on the list.

In Chesterton’s case, the top three priority projects -- resurfacing on Wabash Avenue, Porter Avenue and 11th Street -- all made it on the list. So did Porter’s top three projects -- mill and paving work on Oak Hill Road, Waverly Road, and Beam Street.

Van Til commended the work that went into paring down the original list of $800 million in requests. He noted that many of the government officials going to bat for their projects are competitive and somewhat ego driven. “I wondered when I walked in how this was going to work,” he said. But through negotiation and cooperation, the list was successfully reworked. “Maybe we’re better than we think we are,” Van Til said of Northwest Indiana’s public officials.

Executive Board member and Hobart Mayor Brian Snedecor also commended the process, noting that some of the meetings called to rework the final list were contentious but ultimately successful. “We all felt our communities were being represented in a positive way,” he said.

The stimulus funding list will be presented again for final adoption in April following the public comment period.

Comments can be emailed to Gary Evers at gevers@nirpc.org

 or sent to his attention to NIRPC, 6100 Southport Road, Portage, In. 46368. The full list of projects is on NIRPC’s webpage at www.nirpc.org