Before looking at what American Rescue Plan Act dollars were left, what projects are under contract and what’s been appropriated, the county’s ARPA Committee heard one last request Wednesday to reassign grand funds.
All ARPA dollars have to be under contract by Dec. 31, 2024, and spent by Dec. 31, 2026, or they’re returned to the federal government. Wednesday’s committee meeting was their last for this year.
At their July 31 meeting, the committee approved recommending to the county commissioners and council that the Kosciusko County Community Fair receive a total of $75,790 for repairs to the roofs of the Beef Barn and Home & Family Arts Building and another $10,000 for electrical work. The council and commissioners approved both recommendations.
Fair Board President Randy Shepherd and Treasurer Sheal Dirck went before the committee again Wednesday, with Shepherd reporting, “We were lucky enough to come in under budget on our two roofs that we had approved for repairs. About $17,928. And we would like to move that $17,928 to do some repairs on the electrical on our facility. We’ve got a couple transformers that were next to go like the one did last year. We’d like to replace those and to balance a load a little bit.”
He presented the committee with some quotes from D & D Electric for the work.
“We actually have a total of about $37,000, a little over $37,000, in electrical work that needs to be done before the fair next year,” Shepherd said. “So we’re hoping that we can take this $17,000 and put that towards that to get started.”
Commissioner Cary Groninger asked if the Fair would fund the remainder of the electric work cost if the $17,928 is approved. Council President Mike Long asked if the work would be under contract before the end of the year. Shepherd said yes to both questions.
There were questions regarding how much of the original $85,790 granted to the Fair had been spent to date. Shepherd said of the $75,790 requested for the roof work, $57,862 was spent and paid for. The $10,000 toward electrical work has not been spent.
“That work has not been done yet. We’re waiting,” Shepherd stated.
Councilwoman Sue Ann Mitchell asked if they had a contract in place for the electrical work. Shepherd said as soon as they get permission from the committee to do that, they will have. They have a contract in place for the original $10,000 grant for electrical work.
The committee approved the $17,928 that was saved on the roof work be reassigned to the electrical work, with a copy of the contract for the work provided to the county by Dec. 23.
“The last thing on our agenda is trying to sort through what we’ve got left and what we’ve got contracted and what we’ve already appropriated,” Groninger said.
Originally, the county was awarded $15,433,397 in ARPA funds, based on its population.
County Administrator Marsha McSherry gave the committee the gist of the information she had.
“So, what we’ve done is pulled everything from the spreadsheet that we maintain. We’ve taken all the remaining funds and listed them on here. If you go down to admin. expenses, $490,997.17, that is my estimate of $180,000 for the next two years for admin. expenses,” she said. “Also, 1300 North, the original was $569,000, and it came in less so there’s a retainage fee that won’t be used, so there’s an additional $30,000 that’s been listed there.”
On line item 38067, she said there’s a change order that will be coming through so $10,000 was taken off that but it shouldn’t end up being for the full $10,000, keeping a remaining $89,000.
“So these are my best guesstimates on what we have left, based on what I know,” McSherry said.
Groninger asked, “So the $1,434,000 and some change is what is yet to be spent (by the county)?” McSherry said that’s correct.
“On the other side are the potential projects that we have listed. If you look at, the remaining funds and the potential projects, it’s $148,392.77 that we would move over and pay out of EDIT (Economic Development Income Tax) if one of these projects came to full costs and there were no overages there,” she said.
McSherry noted that everything that the county has in the works is under contract, although there’s one fiber project with Kosciusko REMC that she expects to have a contract for yet this week and they’re still working on the chiller for the county courthouse. Groninger said the chiller equipment is being replaced through a federal grant, but only one bid was received at the commissioners’ meeting Tuesday and two bids are required.
Groninger said the estimate for the labor to install the chiller is $85,000, and the grant just pays for the equipment.
“We know that currently we’ve already approved all of these projects. We knew when we did this that there was going to have to be some money that was going to have to come out of EDIT. Originally, we thought that was going to be the Justice Building parking lot, and that’s what already has been in front of the commissioners and (the council),” Groninger said. “But, those bills are done. They want paid. My concern is, I really don’t want to start by paying some money - like say that $148,000 comes out of EDIT for the parking lot - only because if one of these others drop off, then we don’t have backup to fall to.”
He said he’d like to have a fail safe if all the projects happen at their full estimated cost, like the use of EDIT funds. Long said another fail safe could be Rainy Day Funds.
“I guess the main thing that I’m trying to get at, I just want to make sure that we’ve got more projects allocated than what we have ARPA funds left, and whatever the remainder is left, whether it’s out of Rainy Day or EDIT, I just want to make sure we don’t have to give any of this money back,” Groninger said.
There are some outstanding grant dollars for third-party vendors that the county granted that have not been spent yet. Long asked what the total of that was, but Groninger said he hadn’t added that up yet.
McSherry said county IT has a couple projects they plan to spend money on. CASA has a project to spend money on. They have it in writing, but they just haven’t gotten them done yet, she said as examples. Furniture for the Justice Building will be spent. LaunchPad has a remaining $25,000 distribution. Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts, the Fair and the Webster Conservancy District are the only outstanding grant recipients.
Long asked if the Wagon Wheel has anything under contract at all. Mitchell said she emailed and called but hadn’t heard anything back. Long said they could then potentially have $61,125 back.
“I’ll continue to try to get a hold of them and let them know that if they don’t have anything under contract, they’ve lost the money,” Mitchell said.
Long noted there’s been a lot of change in leadership at the Wagon Wheel since they received the original ARPA grant from the county. McSherry said that would reduce the $148,000 the ARPA fund is estimated to be over by about $61,000.
Groninger asked if there was a contract for the Webster dam project. County Auditor Alyssa Schmucker said yes.
“So the Wagon Wheel is really the only wild card out there,” Groninger stated.
The Chinworth Trail extension project is one of the county’s projects being partially funded by ARPA dollars and a contract is already in place for it. If that project, or another county project, comes in at more than the ARPA dollars granted to it, it was determined that EDIT dollars might be the fix. The trail extension project is not scheduled to begin until spring so by then the committee will have a better understanding of where projects stand.
“The excess that is here is going to come out of EDIT. So it’s just a matter of - and it’s already been approved for the trail. It’s already been approved for the parking lot,” Groninger said.
Mitchell asked what was the worst that could happen if they leave the ARPA projects as they currently stand. “We just say we’re going to do what’s here, and then as time goes on, we know which one of these we’re going to spend and make the adjustments at that point,” she said.
Groninger said they have to be careful because not all of the projects qualify for EDIT funds.
Long said, if needed, they could use some funds from the Rainy Day Fund as that fund can be used for anything, but Mitchell cautioned against that.
“It’s my understanding there’s a whole lot of things that are going to be coming down the pipe in this legislative session that may cause us a whole lot of issues,” she said. “And, some of them could be very critical to the county, and I will share that email later. I just got it so I haven’t had a chance to go over that yet.”
The email talks about this upcoming legislative session and what the state may have counties take over. Groninger called them unfunded state mandates.
The committee decided to leave everything as it currently is and wait and see how it plays out. They have a meeting scheduled for Jan. 15, but that may be cancelled and the meeting scheduled for after that is March 12.
Mitchell said if they put everything on one sheet of paper that the county granted ARPA funds for, “I think we’d be pretty impressed with all the stuff that we managed to accomplish. All the time that was taken to get to this stage.”
Because the county was able to do some of the things they did with the ARPA funds, Groninger said the county was able to build up its EDIT fund to the point where they can do a big project like a parking garage.
In a last bit of discussion, as Mitchell will be moving from the county council to a commissioner, she will remain as an adviser to the committee but Councilman Tony Ciriello will take her place on the committee.