City of Covington may get stimulus funding

As a partial response to the request from Covington residents for more community policing, the city of Covington has applied for grant money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, Office to provide for two community police and another grant to outfit those police with necessary equipment, according to Catherine Cooper, assistant to the mayor.

The COPS grant requires no local matching funds, but Cooper said that in the grant request, three years of community policing would be supplemented by an additional year paid for by the city. In effect, the city would get four years of two community police officers for the price of one year.

The grant request is for a total of $282,000 which includes entry level then step increase salaries; health insurance, life insurance, vacation, sick leave, retirement, worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance and long term disability.

Up to $1 billion nationwide is available for this program.

In addition, Cooper said the city is applying for an additional $271,000 that will go toward equipment for police such as a car, radios, weapons, radar detectors and computers. Cooper the additional equipment will be critical to outfitting the community police if the city received the other grant.

The second grant comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program. Louisiana’s portion of the program unallocated is $4 million, with a maximum grant award of $300,000 to any one entity. Covington has already received about $29,000 in an automatic allocation from the state, leaving a maximum grant request of $271,000.

Although the grant notification is not until the summer, Cooper said more grant opportunities are arriving, including firefighters, surface transportation, waste water disposal and waste treatment.

In all of these cases, no matching funds are required from the city and these alternative sources of funding will be welcome additions to the city’s budget, said Cooper.