OGDENSBURG – Ogdensburg City Council is asking state and federal officials to help offset costs of the Wastewater Treatment Plant by converting existing loans to grants.

“As presently funded, the ratepayers of Ogdensburg cannot afford $22.4 million in loan repayments, and certainly not the additional $5 million in alternate improvements that are still needed to complete the project and have not yet been awarded,” a letter issued to Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Sen. Charles Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and State Sen. Patty Ritchie says.

“We request your assistance with identifying a source of $5 million in grant funding to implement the remainder of this project and respectfully ask that one of the loans for the project be converted as a grant under criteria for disadvantaged communities,” the letter says.

The letter points out that Ogdensburg is located in St. Lawrence County, which ranks second out of the state’s 62 counties in terms of poverty and unemployment rates.

The letter also shed light on the fact that the city is classified by the state as a “Financially Distressed Community” due to its economic condition and present fiscal state.

According to a 2019 report from the state’s Financial Restructuring Board more than 26% of the population is on public assistance and median income is well-below the state average.

The letter also notes that the city has the highest tax rate of any community in the North Country, has lost 31% of its population since 1959 and that 59 percent of property in the city is tax exempt.

“At present, only 20% of the total project cost is grant funding. Meanwhile, the City of Ogdensburg has worked with the state to receive waste from a neighboring municipality – the Village of Heuvelton – whose project is funded by 69 of the total project cost,” the letter says. “We are also being asked to take waste form the Town of Lisbon to assist this community with its waste water problems. We are doing our part with a Project Labor Agreement, but the State needs to do more.”

According to the letter the loans can be modified in the form of principal forgiveness, negative interest rate loans, or grants.

“We would argue that the state’s hardship rules be analyzed again and that a larger share of this project be funded by grants by converting a larger share of the loans to grants, and by providing 100% of the $5 million in critical alternates as grant funds,” the letter says.

The letter notes that a significant portion of the city’s water and sewer fees are paid for by tax exempt properties and that should any of those facilities close, ratepayers would have to pick up the difference.

“We, therefore, ask that New York State and the Federal governments reevaluate our community’s disadvantaged status for additional grant assistance based on hardship requirements. It would be less of a financial burden if the smaller $12,000,000 pass through loans was converted to a grant. We would also request that (you) take into consideration the impact on poor residents who will be paying for the $5 million in additional costs that will largely serve state facilities,” the letter says.

The letters are signed by the full council, but the idea has been spearheaded by Deputy Mayor John Rishe.