The Perry City Council has set a special early morning meeting for tomorrow to decide whether or not they can or should move forward with the downtown lighting project.

The City has been working on plans to replace some of the current street lights downtown with more energy efficient structures and a decision was expected to be made during Monday’s council meeting.  That was until City Administrator Butch Niebuhr received a call from the Iowa Energy Bank, which was run under the Department of Administrative Services…

“They got notice yesterday (Monday) that they were to seize and desist anything that they were doing as far as the energy loans, and that that was going to be taken over by the Iowa Economic Development Authority” says Niebuhr.

It’s unknown now if the city will still have the funds to do the project as the Iowa Economic Development Authority is unsure what the future holds for the Iowa Energy Bank.

“Two scenarios, if we have the money the council could go ahead with the bill that we’ve got… or if we don’t find anything out our recommendation to the council would be not to go forward because we’re looking at a project that’s a quarter of a million dollars and without knowing that we have the funds in the bank to be able to pull off that project, we can’t in our right mind have the council vote to do that” says Niebuhr.

Niebuhr says he doubts they will have enough information from the state before tomorrow’s meeting and may have to start the project over again if funding is available.