The town of Clarkdale discussed how to use its American Rescue Plan Act funding at its July 27 meeting.
The town was given $1,466,507 of funding assistance from ARPA, which President Joe Biden approved March 11 to, in part, provide relief to local governments still reeling from the effects of COVID-19.
The town will receive half of the money this year and the other half one year after the date it received the first set of funding, Interim Finance Director Neal Young said.
In the Fiscal Year 2021-2022 budget, the town allocated $72,000 of ARPA funds to go toward providing premium pay for eligible employees who worked as essential workers from March 2020 to March 2021, namely those who were critical to protecting the health and well-being of the community during the COVID-19 pandemic such as medical staff, truck drivers, transit staff, educators, public safety and public health employees among others.
At its July 27 meeting, the council discussed options for how to spend the remaining funds, which must be used, or at least committed to a project, by Dec. 31, 2024.
There are many uses that the funds can legally be put toward: Public health, safety and economic impacts, premium pay, revenue loss and investments in infrastructure.
Public health, safety and economic impacts includes things related to COVID-19 such as paying for testing, contact tracing, enforcement of public health orders and improvement of health care facilities. It also includes negative economic impacts because of the pandemic such as helping households with food or rent insecurity or those needing utility assistance.
“When we’re spending money responding to COVID-19, that is considered an eligible use. We would need to identify negative impact of the emergency and then determine how the intervention, our expenditure of funds, would address that need or impact,” Young said.
Among those impacted by COVID-19 can be businesses, and ARPA money can go to help pay for expenses related to closures or changes in a business that supports social distancing or an otherwise COVID-safe reopening. However, Young said he would not recommend using the funds for these issues because it would require the town to establish systems to ensure those receiving funds are eligible and would have to document its spending and report to the U.S. Treasury.
Another option would be to put the funds toward any revenue loss the town endured, which could be used in the future in the case of another shutdown.
“Based on our review of the financial data, Clarkdaleis in a pretty good position in terms of revenue loss. It would be hard for us to demonstrate at this time. I would not recommend revenue loss as an option,” Young said.
The final option, and the one recommended by town staff, is to invest the money into infrastructure projects. Eligible projects include those for improving water, wastewater, sewer or broadband. The town of Clarkdale currently has several water, wastewater and broadband projects in its plans, which Young said would meet the eligibility requirements for ARPA funding.
“The good news about infrastructure projects is that it doesn’t require any additional systems to be developed or personnel work or anything like that. We would really just go about our normal business with an alternative funding source,” Young said.
Public Works Director Maher Hazine said the town needs to provide enhancements and upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant, make necessary wastewater improvements along State Route 89A, and put a new well into service, all of which would be eligible for ARPA funding.
Additionally, Young said if the town uses the ARPA funds to pay for these projects, along with providing premium pay for some employees, it could help preserve and stabilize the town’s unreserved fund balance and deficit.
“I believe those are the easiest for us to implement, could provide lasting benefits to the community, and will help stabilize our water and wastewater unreserved fund balances and help reward those that were really here for the town during the most difficult time,” Young said.
The council agreed and ultimately decided to give staff direction to explore using the funds for wastewater infrastructure projects and potentially broadband.
“It’s perfect. We did our planning, you’ve explained it well, you’ve given us flexibility. My gosh, we have dollars that we didn’t know we could use so much before, and that’s kind of nice for moving forward, particularly in our water, wastewater infrastructure with hopefully some identification of where we can use some money for broadband,” Mayor Robyn Prud’homme-Bauer said.
