Oconto County Board approves ARPA spending plan

How do you spend $7.4 million in “free” money?

That’s the challenge facing the Oconto County Board as it determines what to do with its allocation of American Rescue Plan Act funds. ARPA is the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package that the U.S. Congress passed earlier this year.

The board passed County Administrator Kevin Hamann’s plan 28-0 during its Aug. 19 meeting.

“The U.S. Treasury came out with a 162-page guidance, and we reviewed that for eligible projects,” Hamann told supervisors. “We asked departments to submit their requests. We reviewed those and drafted a plan, reviewed those with the Finance/Insurance Committee on two separate occasions, and that is the recommendation for the plan,” referring to the project summary that ultimately was approved by the board.

The money was allocated to the county with a requirement that it must be spent on eligible projects by the end of 2024, he said. The plan is fairly specific for the rest of this year and 2022 but more general for 2023 and 2024.

“This is just a plan; it will be adjusted,” Hamann said. “You are going to have to constantly adjust this based on the guidance.”

One project was approved minutes after the entire plan passed: replacement of the footbridge over Chute Pond that was destroyed in the July 2019 windstorm that also leveled hundreds of thousands of trees in northern Oconto County. Michels Foundations was contracted to build a new, accessible bridge using $100,000 in ARPA funds, $105,000 of funds remaining from a FEMA grant to repair storm damage and $136,000 from the county’s insurance carrier.

Other 2021 projects in the ARPA plan include: $1 million to help build new emergency radio towers; $500,000 in matching funds for northern Oconto County broadband service; $365,000 toward the $1.7 million construction project for New Beginnings in Gillett; a $200,000 body scanner at the jail to reduce physical contact between staff and inmates as a COVID mitigation tactic; and $252,458 to remodel the county board room at the courthouse to allow greater social distancing.

The county board approved the broadband funds earlier this summer. Supervisors have been meeting for more than a year in the fellowship hall at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, down the street from the courthouse, to allow the board to spread out more than is possible in the board room’s previous configuration.

Supervisor Diane Nichols suggested that the county consider adopting a program being run in Marinette County where properties taken for delinquent taxes are donated to NEWCAP, which then renovates or razes the homes, resells them and gives the profits back to the county.

A program like that could increase the stock of local affordable housing, Nichols said.

“It is a desperate need throughout this county,” she said. “Every community needs affordable housing, and if the county got into this, I could see this as a revolving loan fund. … As those properties are sold, those moneys go back in, and in the meantime you’re putting property back on the tax rolls.”