As Richmond County residents wait to see what they’ll get from the government’s stimulus package, some troubling trends are coming out of Washington.

While the package promises to create jobs, there are a whole list of things that the package won’t touch.

Is there money for wind turbines? Yes. New traffic signs? Yes. Hybrid car discounts? Yes.

How about money for new libraries? No. New town halls? No. Swimming pools? No. School athletic stadiums? No.

While there may be some money to plunk solar panels on an aging municipal building, there’s no money set aside to replace it.

There’s some money to hire police officers, but no money to rebuild the stations they work in. The opposite’s true for firefighters. There is no money to hire more, but at least some funding to improve firehouses.

So far Richmond County has received a small pot of money for law enforcement and $500,000 for workforce development and $20,000 for emergency food programs. North Carolina as a whole is getting $6.1 billion.

The billions that are going to railroad improvements won’t take place here. Those high-speed rail projects people talk about don’t fit into something area residents will enjoy. So far no highway funds have been sent to the Rockingham area, despite a solid list of shovel-ready projects.

Richmond County is seeking money for airport expansion and the City of Rockingham wants cash for sewer improvements.

“This is trickle-down stimulus,” one town administrator in the northeast told the Associated Press.

In the end, Congress opted to funnel much of the money through existing federal channels and created a confusing hodgepodge of rules about which local projects might be eligible.

Under the law, if states miss a deadline or don’t spend the money fast enough, they lose the cash. Vice President Joe Biden warned last month that if states misspend the money, “don’t look for any help from the federal government for a long while.”

But states across the country are asking how they’re supposed to oversee the disbursement of billions of dollars intended to boost the economy with no budget to do so.

Time will tell if the stimulus bill be the key toward a swift economic recovery or a costly burden for generations to come.