While its effect on the population of workers in hard-hats is still hard to detect, the flow of the stimulus spending is now bubbling up everywhere. A boulder squashed the stairs that descended from St. Paul’s West Side to the river, but $2 million in stimulus spending will help them rise again. The St. Paul City Council also likes this businessman’s plan for January tomatoes enough to endorse spending $500,000 for a hydroponic greenhouse.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, the City Council is putting $2 million of its $3.6 million stimulus “community development bonus” into the long-vacant Shubert Theater on Hennepin Avenue, a decision that got a big thumbs-down from the Star Tribune’s online poll. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stopped by the city this week to tout the benefits of a relatively modest stimulus project, the $107,000 grant for summer jobs for 43 young people at the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center and Career Immersion High School.

The Metropolitan Council is also starting to name its priorities, among them, the Dakota Rail Trail, which will get nearly $3.5 million for two bridges and an extension into Carver County. Here are more stimulus-funded projects approved this week by the Met Council:

Replace Lowry Avenue bridge over the Mississippi River
Reconstruct pedestrian bridge over TH65 in Columbia Heights
Realign and widen county highways 10 and 101 in Maple Grove
Reconstruct Akron Avenue in Rosemount
Construct bridge and retaining walls for the CR83 overpass of I-35 in Washington County

Here’s how stimulus money will soup up transit:

31 standard, 30 hybrid and 29 articulated bus replacements for the Metro Transit fleet ($49.6 million)
15 hybrid and 1 standard bus replacements for the Metro Mobility fleet ($1.8 million)
27 standard small buses for dial-a-ride services ($1.4 million)

The full Met Council list, in PDF form, is here.

Whistleblower wouldn’t know any of this if it weren’t for the diligent reporting of my colleagues Steve Alexander, Chris Havens, Laurie Blake, Chao Xiong and Steve Brandt.

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