County has time to allocate more than $800K in ARPA funds
CENTREVILLE – St. Joseph County will have the luxury of time and leeway to decide what to do with more than $800,000 in remaining funds it was issued through the federal government.
During last week’s executive committee meeting, finance director Angie Steinman said she was recently provided an update on a matter related to American Rescue Plan Act money county officials have not yet allocated. The county still has $818,000 of the $11.8 million it landed in 2021.
“The original ARPA guidance said anything up to $10 million could be counted as revenue loss and we didn’t have to specifically report what we were going to do with it,” Steinman said. “But anything over $10 million had to be put in categories. We have $800,000-plus that wasn’t allocated, spoken for or promised, so rather than trying to put it into one of those special categories – because it was over the $10 million mark – we’re actually able to just (declare) it as revenue loss and allocate it later.”
In March, commissioners agreed to re-create a steering committee to focus on allocating the $818,000 before an end-of-the-year deadline. In light of the recent development Steinman shared, however, that step can be delayed.
“The steering committee was designed to allocate specific dollars to specific recipients (but) we’re not under a deadline to do that right now,” she said. “We may meet later, but there’s no rush to do so.”
County officials in October 2022 identified 31 recipients as part of $1 million it had set aside as external funding through its ARPA dollars. Steinman said at least one recipient indicated it will be unable to meet requirements for the money and has agreed to forfeit its $15,000 back to the county.
In addition to designating $1 million toward in-county recipients, the board directed $4 million toward renovation of the county courts building, $4 million to address future budget shortfalls and $2 million for capital-improvement projects.
Steinman said the fate of the $818,000 will be determined in due time.
“Generally, I recommend when we have one-time dollars we use them for one-time expenditures, such as capital projects,” she said.
In an unrelated matter, Central Dispatch director Stacey Bower provided an update on a proposal to develop a communications tower on county-owned property at Cade Lake Park in Fawn River Township.
Bower said the proposed tower would provide much-needed relief to fill a gap in coverage in the southeast portion of the county.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: County has time to allocate more than $800K in ARPA funds
