The Cache County Council approved more American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to be used toward five specific projects.
At the May 15 council meeting, Alma Burgess, the Cache County grants manager, presented to the council about the ARPA funds and the specific projects that will be funded with this approval.
“At the end of February, the county council approved some additional ARPA funds to be opened up so that county departments could apply for some projects in the next couple of months,” Burgess said.
Burgess said that the application was open in March and April, and he received 10 applications for the $472,480 funds available.
“After the deadline, they were reviewed,” Burgess said. “Three were found not eligible to be able to receive ARPA funding.”
Burgess said that the remaining seven were reviewed by the Cache County Appropriations Committee. That committee ranked the projects and the top five were recommended for funding, with their requests coming out to $500,492 total.
The funding requests recommended by the appropriations committee were for an ambulance purchase, a first responder mental health program from the Cache County Attorney’s Office, refinishing concrete floors in the Cache County Event Center, the Popup Bike Lane Initiative and web-based scheduling and venue management software from Cache County Fairgrounds.
The ambulance purchase was ranked as the most important to be funded. The ARPA funds would cover $135,000 toward the $385,000 purchase by the Cache County Fire District. The first responder mental health program was ranked second most important because it is mandatory by the state of Utah.
According to Burgess, the Popup Bike Lane Initiative would purchase barrier devices to test if bike lanes would be a good fit for certain roads rather than just placing them in.
“You could put them out in a temporary way just to test and see if an area or a particular road that you would put them on would work,” Burgess said.
Burgess said that while the projects up for approval came to a total of $28,012 more than the available ARPA funds, those additional funds should become available as prior ARPA funded projects will soon end without using the entire budget allotted to them.
“Next Monday, they’re going to be starting in the parking lot, and that one came under bid,” Burgess said. “Even with a change order, it’s still going to be $100,000 plus under bid, and then there may be some others that won’t be able to spend all of the funds. So those funds could become available.”
The county council approved the recommended projects to receive the available ARPA funds after the presentation and discussion.
