Cascade County allocates more than $13M in ARPA COVID relief
The Cascade County Fee on Tuesday approved a resolution allocating more than $13 million in American Rescue System Act (ARPA) resources presented by the federal government to mitigate the economic effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
County Commissioner Joe Briggs explained the decisions on how to expend the revenue have taken up a lot of commission and employees time, including a 6-hour meeting on Monday to finalize the resolution.
The community region obtained $38 million in ARPA cash, claimed Commissioner Don Ryan, and the county had $15.8 million to spend on local community jobs.
“It was the perception by the County Commission that this is the community’s dollars, it’s not ours,” said Ryan.
ARPA policies condition the county can only invest the resources in four places: To change revenues misplaced thanks to COVID-19, premium pay out for personnel, community well being reaction and detrimental impacts on journey and tourism, and broadband, sewer and water infrastructure.
The funds could not be put into a pension fund or in any other case hidden away. It are not able to be employed to pay back financial debt providers on jobs or to generate a “rainy day fund” for long term fees. Lastly, it simply cannot be made use of to shell out for court settlements or litigation versus the county.
Ryan said simply because Montana does not have a gross sales tax, the county did not take the monetary hit that others did for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the workers’ pay spot, Ryan explained the commission did not want to decide on and pick out who would get compensation, and the county did not see any task decline due to COVID-19.
The county identified that reaction to general public health and fitness, effects on journey and tourism and neighborhood infrastructure assignments would take precedence.
To increase their means to allocate the income, the fee experienced to wait for the state to give out its revenue for sewer and water jobs mainly because there was no cause to allocate money to jobs compensated for with state revenue.
The fee received extra than 60 requests from the community for ARPA funds, and they ended up ready to guide with 51 of individuals. Not all have been funded totally.
“The truth of the matter is, if we had taken a few of the requests that we got, we could’ve used every single dime on just a few specific tasks, and we believed there was improved utilizes for that,” explained Ryan.
The $13 million was allotted as follows:
- $787,000 to public wellbeing, most to go over the cost of COVID-19 reaction
- $5.4 million to drinking water and sewer initiatives
- $2.8 million to improvements in Cascade County in the areas of general public security, IT requests and the Montana ExpoPark
- $4.2 million to community partner jobs this kind of as libraries, hospitals, research, housing shortages, museums, job instruction, youth initiatives and economic advancement
There are a number of tasks of neighborhood desire getting funded by ARPA.
Black Eagle h2o and sewer improvements came in at the premier total: $2.3 million.
The Cascade County Sheriff’s Office environment is having human body cameras and a new proof storage building for $1.6 million, and the Cascade County Detention Heart will see advancements and COVID-19 reimbursement to the tune of $946,000. The Juvenile Detention Centre also will get $87,000 in COVID reimbursement.
The Good Falls Advancement Authority is finding $1 million to safe far more land in the AgriTech Park. NeighborWorks will get $650,000 toward the Baatz Building, which is created to home the homeless.
The C.M. Russell Museum’s $500,000 will go toward a new setting up to household offices while the museum remodels.
A overall of $361,000 will be place into the Montana ExpoPark, and the Fantastic Falls Faculty MSU got a $388,000 increase for its CDL schooling system.
Other benefactors include things like the Big River Ruckus party, Rural Fire Council, Great Falls Crisis Expert services, Options, Inc., Alliance for Youth, McLaughlin Analysis Institute, Ingenium, The Historical past Museum, Wedsworth and Belt Libraries, the Great Falls Community Library, Centerville School, the Excellent Falls Senior Heart and Disaster and Crisis Companies.
The remaining ARPA cash have to be allotted by December 2024, and the jobs that receive money have to be accomplished by December 2026. The county continue to has some money in reserve for far more tasks or far more funds toward present allocations.
