White House officials this week defended the $814 billion economic stimulus package -- more formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- as a success, saying it's created jobs and put people who wouldn't otherwise have jobs on payrolls across the U.S. Others -- most notably Republicans hoping to gain even more traction by the 2012 presidential election -- point to the 10% unemployment rate as evidence of the Obama administration's failure.
So, what do you think? Has your firm benefited from the stimulus? Were you expecting more?
LandDesign is a Landscape Architecture, Civil Engineering and Planning firm and we knew from the outset that our core markets were not going to benefit greatly from stimulus funds. However, we dug into the Recovery Act and mastered the Build America Bond program. We published an article about the program to our clients and built a team including lawyers, bankers, and economic development professionals. We spent countless hours educating our private and public clients on how to use the program and navigating local, state and federal rules. This hard work paid off with significant contracts for projects that were not "shovel" ready. If the tax extenders bill passes, we have several additional project ready to start. We didn't get our work from the Recovery Act in a conventional fashion, but with hard work we figured it out.
ReplyDeleteThe economic stimulous is an utter failure. Although we have worked on some projects associated with economic stimulous funds, it is very obvious that left without the stimulous money, we would have made a more rapid recovery and been left on a more even playing field when competing for projects.
ReplyDeleteOur privately funded projects are simply more profitable than publiclly funded work and the competition is based simply on our ability to perform the work within the parameters of the market. This is unlike the public projects that continually favor contrived and phony minority interests without regard to quality.