Thursday, July 20, 2006

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senator Kit Bond today announced that he secured more than $6 million in federal funds for key projects in St. Louis in the Senate Transportation-Treasury-HUD spending bill.

“These projects will mean improved health care and education services, more efficient transportation and increased home ownership and community outreach for neighborhoods in the St. Louis area,” said Bond. “I will continue to use my position on the Appropriations Committee and as Missouri’s senior Senator to send federal dollars back to the state to fund local priorities.”

As chairman of the Senate Transportation-Treasury-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, Bond secured the more than $6 million in federal funds in the fiscal year 2007 spending bill, which passed subcommittee earlier this week and is scheduled to pass the full committee this afternoon. Before being signed into the law the bill must be passed by the full Senate and reconciled with the House of Representatives version.

Bond secured more than $6.35 million in funds for the following St. Louis projects:

• $2,557,800 for the City of Herculaneum-Joachim Avenue Bridge Replacement - Funds will be used for the new "South Bridge," which will replace the existing condemned and closed city bridge on Joachim Avenue over Joachim Creek. The new bridge will be less prone to flooding and provide heavy and other commercial truck and vehicle access to and from the industrial facilities through a non-residential areas of the City.

• $1 million for the Saint Louis University Advanced Neurosurgical Innovation Center – Funds will be used to permit real-time bidirectional interaction between Saint Louis University (SLU) emergency room physicians, trauma surgeons and neurosurgeons with medics/doctors at remote and/or rural facilities to optimize initial triage and surgical management of head trauma patients across the country.

• $875,000 Mobile BioScience Education Unit - Funds will be used for the Mobile BioScience Education Unit, a joint project between St. Louis Science Center and MOBIO, for equipment, marketing and promotional materials.

• $800,000 for the Farmington Regional Airport – Funds will be used for partial parallel taxiway construction at the St. Francois county airport (Bond secured these funds with Senator Jim Talent).

• $500,000 for the Forest Park South Neighborhood Redevelopment Project – Funds will be used to improve streetscapes and signage and draw visitors to the area.

• $300,000 for Bland Street Improvements – Funds will be used for major improvements to current streets including storm water infrastructure (Bond secured these funds with Senator Jim Talent).

• $325,000 for the University of Missouri-St. Louis – Funds will be used for the Examining Policy Options to Increase Minority Homeownership and Eradicate Urban Poverty program, which will establish research on policy options to achieve increased minority homeownership and eradicate urban poverty

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