By Mallory Kruml
The Port Townsend City Council received an update on the city’s spending of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding and unanimously approved $298,525 of fund reallocations during their Oct. 21 meeting.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury awarded the city $2.7 million in ARPA funds between 2021 and 2022 to aid in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds can be used to replace lost public sector revenue, respond to the negative economic impacts of the pandemic, provide premium pay for essential workers or to invest in water, sewer and broadband services, but must be allocated by the end of the year.
“There are some remaining funds that we need to reallocate based on some of the expenses coming in less than what we projected them to be and some of them are for projects where we just couldn’t get them under contract before the end of this year,” said Jodi Adams, the city’s director of finance and technology services.
In 2021, city council members decided to prioritize spending the funds on supporting staff and financial sustainability, and improving parks and recreation.
$2 million in ARPA funds will be spent by the end of 2024.
“I want to say what a great job staff has done dancing with this fund,” said council member Monica MickHager. “There’s not much good that I can figure out that has come out of the years of COVID, but this has been a big help to our city. The universe sometimes provides and I am pretty happy with how this money has been spent.”
Line items with the largest reallocations, or budget reductions, include IT infrastructure improvements, renovations at the Pink House, parking management, chamber upgrades, park vehicles and the director of parks and recreation strategy.
The city added new projects allocating $50,000 for improvements on Kearney Street, $50,000 for boiler repair at the Mountain View Pool, $40,000 for a new excavator and $300,000 for professional service attorney services.
The professional service attorney services funding is among the highest price tags for the ARPA budget, next to $240,000 for a two-year-term long range planner, $269,958 for a director of parks and recreation strategy, $356,000 for two new police vehicles and $401,000 for city hall improvements.
The city is treating the professional services attorney services line item as a last stop for the ARPA funding. Any funding that isn’t allocated by the last day of this year, will be put toward attorney services. Right now, the city estimates that number to be $300,000.
“Some of the projects aren’t finished yet so we don’t actually know how much the remaining funds are going to be next year,” Adams said. “So, we added a line item, for the professional service attorney services that is a contract we already have in place that we are utilizing, so we would like to allocate those extra miscellaneous nickels and dimes that we end up with at the end of the projects toward that professional services contract.”
The newly reallocated funds will be included in the city’s 2025 budget.
