Federal stimulus money in Vigo County could get the ball rolling on job creation. Thursday night, the Terre Haute City Council talked economic development.

Vigo County’s unemployment rate is at 9.8 percent; higher than the state and national average.

Last month, Vigo County Commissioners declared the county an Economic Recovery Zone; opening the door for millions of federal stimulus dollars to help the struggling local economy.

City councilman George Azar said, "That gave us approximately $7 million that the state allocated through the Stimulus Act."

Half of the city's recovery allotment could go to Clabber Girl to build a distribution center on East Margaret Avenue; a plan city councilman George Azar supports. He said, "It's a great thing for Terre Haute to have the distribution center here. With the economy the way it is now, we want to bring in as much as we can and we certainly don't want to discourage investment, we want to encourage investment."

The assistance will come in the form of recovery zone bonds; money provided by the President's stimulus package. The bonds would be paid back by clabber-girl.

"The city, county and the tax-payers are not liable for anything so it's a win / win situation," said Azar.

Initially, Azar says the Clabber Girl distribution center will only produce three new jobs but opens the door for future economic development.

"When another business looks at Terre Haute and says, 'Oh, they're willing to go along with this bond issue for Clabber Girl, maybe they'll decide to move here and have 500 new jobs; who knows, we hope that's the case," explained Azar.

The City Council will vote next week on this ordinance. As far as the rest of the stimulus money that's being appropriated, we don't really know where it's going to go yet.