Mayor's Message 8/17/22

Good evening, 

Thank you to everyone who attended Monday night’s town hall in person and virtually. This was our third ARPA town hall that we’ve held since January of this year. It has now been 8 months since our first ARPA town hall meeting and I can happily say that we have answered all questions received from both our residents and Council concerning the usage of these funds. In February, we hired an ARPA Administrator from UHY Meridian, Jack Reagan, to ensure our compliance with the federal “final rule” and we’ve committed to continuous updates on the status of the funds. Jack has been to four public meetings now to answer questions from the public and from council and to discuss the timeline for the allocation and spending of the ARPA funds. I’m glad that the ARPA ordinances are on tonight’s agenda. Our residents are eager to see real progress concerning the release of the funds so the administration can begin the bid process for projects and procurement. 

Since Monday’s Town Hall, my administration has updated the ARPA PowerPoint. This updated PowerPoint has been posted to our township website, under “Finance Department”, “Special Reports”. I would like to share with everyone the updates:  In response to council’s request for more details, here are the changes: 

This is a more complete breakdown of the Police & Fire investments.

The Community Center budget slide includes a breakdown by construction category.  With this once in a lifetime opportunity that the ARPA funds present to us, we could construct this much needed resource for our community with little to no cost in local taxpayer dollars. By utilizing the ARPA dollars as matching funds for other state and federal grants, we can spend $4 million in local funding and receive $11 million in total. There is a lot of opportunity with federal and state matching grants, but in order to meet application deadlines, we must have the ARPA funding allocated and available. 

Regarding COVID-19 relief we parsed out Premium Pay and Employee Vaccine Incentives for our employees who worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to keep things running smoothly on a day to day basis..

Throughout this week, we’ve also made an effort to work with council and have their input reflected in the ordinances.  In Ordinance 3119 which deals with the Community Center funding, these two Whereas clauses were added (read from the ordinance).  Would someone from council like to make a motion to include these two Whereas clauses in all of the ARPA ordinances?

It’s great to see the ARPA ordinances back on the agenda, I hope Council does what is right for their constituents and votes to introduce and advertise the release of the funds.