During the 08/04/2021 Common Council meeting, Mayor Woodford reviewed the allocation process for the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funds that the city has received.
As a part of ARPA, municipalities received direct allocations of funds which the mayor stated was an unprecedented step on the part of the federal government. Due to the unprecedented nature of these payouts, the government is still making up the rules for what municipalities can do with those dollars.
There is currently an interim rule in place, but Appleton is operating with the understanding that that interim rule can and likely will change in a number of ways before it’s made final. From March 1st through June 30th, the city was working to understand the parameters of ARPA so that they could have a framework to operate within, and they now have at least a sense of how those funds can be used.
Currently they are working on understanding community needs and figuring out what opportunities they have to address those needs with allowable uses of ARPA funds.
Through the end of August, they will be engaging in public listening sessions and gathering input from directors, staff members, community partners, and other agencies as they work to put together a provisional list of projects and initiatives that they’ll be bringing forward for recommendation.
From September 1st through September 30th, they will work through strategic program development which will essentially consist of (a) putting together that list of recommendations regarding the use of the funds and (b) determining that the costs identified are eligible under ARPA guidance. He added that they would be identifying and clarifying the criteria they would be using to make those recommendations so that their reasons for making the recommendations would be clear both to the Council and to the community at large.
Additionally, during September, they will also be finalizing the procedures regarding administration of fund distributions. Their intention was to bring forward recommendations through the executive budget. So it would be part of the executive budget process which will become the purview of the Council. They mayor will be bringing forward recommendations for the Council’s consideration, but the Common Council will have final say over the distribution of ARPA funds. From there, they will complete the overall city budget process and hopefully come away with a clearly articulated plan for how ARPA funds will be used.
In terms of expectations, Mayor Woodford thought there were a couple priorities they were going into this process with.
Firstly, they do not want to use these dollars to hire additional full time city employees because these are one time grant dollars, and if they hire full time employees with grant dollars they will eventually either have to let them go or find resources within the existing budget to continue paying them. Therefore, they will be prioritizing recommendations that don’t add city full time equivalent employees and will be looking instead at contracted services or other ways to accomplish their objectives.
They also want to be careful about creating additional overhead for the city in terms of administering these funds, which means they want to try to work within the city’s existing procedures and policies as they used these funds [as opposed to creating a separate board or policy or structure to administer the funds, or so I took him to mean.]
He said there would be opportunity for input along the way, and he had heard some suggestions from members of the Council as well as community partners and members of the community. They continue to welcome those suggestions as they develop a provisional list of uses for the funds.
Their current understanding is that they have until 2024 to use the ARPA money. There are a couple of areas where, so long as the expenses are planned for the spending can potentially go beyond 2024 but not by much. He thought it was important for them to keep in mind that there is time to use these funds, but they also needed to set expectations.
As a city, they want to make sure that they’re prepared to address any issues that arise in the coming months and the coming year related to their Covid-19 response. Therefore, as part of their recommendations, they will be advising that some of the funds be withheld to make sure that the city has the resources in place to respond and address issues related to Covid should they come up–particularly over the coming year.
He concluded by saying they welcome input and are trying to be extremely careful about the commitments they make so that they don’t have to walk those commitments back when they get new rules as happened to some communities across the country after they made plans before the interim rule came out clarifying how ARPA funds could be used. They want to be extremely careful about that and manage expectations appropriately.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=873331&GUID=05E94B95-E8A1-4761-82D5-5668A4FB8932
Be the first to reply