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Approximately 88 grants were awarded from Kosciusko County’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to projects, and over 30% of the over $15 million the county received was awarded to projects not directly county related.
County Administrator Marsha McSherry and County Commissioner Cary Groninger pointed out those estimated figures during a short Kosciusko County ARPA Committee meeting Thursday morning where they did an overview of where the county is at on its ARPA accounts.
McSherry said, “The fund balance at this time is $42,120.81. Of that, we have a project that is still open for the fairgrounds and they have $6,600.43 of this project to be expended. That would then leave us with a balance of $35,520.38. That would then be transferred over for the auditor’s office to county general for payroll for the community coordinator (Amy Roe).”
A list of projects on a spreadsheet before the committee members Thursday are county projects that were approved for ARPA funds, if available, that will now be paid for out of county funds or already paid for.
Summarizing McSherry’s comments, Groninger said, “Roughly, we have $42,000 and then we have $6,600 that’s still not been used by the fairgrounds on a project that they’re still working on. So that still needs to come out of that $42,000, which leaves us the $35,520. And then we had stated that we could just move that over to help pay for Amy Roe’s salary here for the remainder of this year.”
McSherry said that was correct.
“All other projects are either already been paid for or the remainder of those funds are going to come out of normal county funds,” Groninger said.
McSherry said yes as they are county projects.
“We had appropriated some of those ARPA dollars for administration expense, so we are still within bounds with what we stated because all of this had to be ... appropriated by the end of ’24 but spent by the end of ’26,” Groninger stated.
The county received its $15 million-plus in 2021 and 2022 from the $1.9 trillion federal economic stimulus package signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021, to accelerate the U.S. recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic’s impacts.
Having started out with over $15 million and now done to $35,000 with a “home” for it, Groninger said, “I think we’ve done a pretty good job of landing the plane on the runway.”
County Auditor Alyssa Schmucker told the committee she didn’t think they needed to take any actions Thursday. The appropriation of the dollars will go through the county council for their approval, she said, and the committee’s meeting Thursday was just for a review of the funds.
“Becky (Dye) has the reporting done for the ARPA website, all of those requirements she has done. So we are just hoping that we can just hurry up and get this stuff done, and then we can be done,” Schmucker stated.
McSherry then pointed out, “According to our records, we have approximately 88 grants that we paid out.”
“There is quite the list,” Schmucker stated.
Groninger said when they looked at the dollars the county actually gave out to projects that were not directly county related, “I think it was over 30%.”
He noted the county’s whole communication system was paid for with ARPA funds, and that project “touched everybody in the whole county - all of our fire departments, police departments. I think we were blessed to have a project like that already kind of in the queue when this happened, that we were able to react quickly and allocate those funds.”
Dye and McSherry both commented that their respective offices will be glad when it’s all done because they’ve had to do a lot of work for the funds.
“I think the other big thing that I see is we’re able to - because of some of these ARPA funds we were able to do projects that we would have used other county funds for, which in turn has allowed us to have cash available that, if the parking garage would proceed, we have the funds available to do that with cash and not have to borrow money, so that’s - as much as I make fun of some of this funny money, as I call it - it’s still been a good opportunity for our county to do a lot of good in our communities, as well as all of the stuff that was going on during Covid it was used for,” Groninger said.
Schmucker guaranteed that when the county has its annual audit by the state done for 2025, the ARPA funds will probably be one of the main things that they will look at. Groninger said it has been that way every year so far “and no findings have ever been found through that, so that’s a lot to be thankful for.”
