Congress originally planned to hand out a total of 447 million dollars in stimulus funds this year – to install insulation in private homes and make them more energy efficient.
But that amount has skyrocketed to 4.7 billion dollars nationwide – a total of 30 million dollars for the state of Idaho during the next two years – with four million dollars of that for south central community action partnership.
Ken Robinette, executive director of South Central Community Action says “Typically what we've done in the past with the Department of Energy funding that comes through, is we weatherize about 180 homes a year. With this money coming in, it's gonna allow us to get up to about 550 homes a year.”
Right now community action partnership has a list of people waiting to receive weatherization services – that's six years long in Twin Falls and 14 years in the Mini–Cassia area.
Robinette says the additional money could help trim that wait by three or four years.
and now the annual income limit is just over 44 thousand dollars – for a qualifying family of four.

Robinette says “In coordination with bringing in the extra money, they also allowed us to put more money into the homes, up to $6500 for an average cost, compared to about 3200 in the past.”
The only holdup right now is that the departments of Energy and Labor are working out the details of the Davis Bacon Act – which requires contractors and subcontractors to pay their employees no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for corresponding work on similar projects in our area.
Robinette says “Well, we're hoping that the Davis–Bacon issue will be resolved by the end of the month or the first part of August, so that we can start utilizing this money in the community.”