County explores ways to spend ARPA funds

     With an ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) committee meeting following the regular Jones County Board of Supervisor meeting on Aug. 31, the board approved County Auditor Whitney Hein’s interim ARPA report.

     The county was awarded $4 million in COVID funds from the federal government.

     Hein explained the report, thus far, offers information on the funds already allocated and expensed for, which, for Jones County, is zero.

     “We haven’t spent or committed funds to anything,” Hein said.

     Hein informed the board that there are a couple of ways ARPA funds could be spent: Either through revenue replacement, or based on certain criteria.

     Revenue replacement involves the county’s loss of revenue due to COVID-19 compared to the base year (2019).

     “You could use the money for any purpose,” Hein said in this particular instance.

     If the county cannot show a loss in revenue, then the funds could be spent on very specific projects.

     “I’m not comfortable going down the revenue replacement avenue,” offered Hein. “There’s some misinformation out there about how people are calculating it. Based on my calculations, we had a revenue loss for calendar year 2020 versus our base year of Fiscal Year 2019, a little over $1 million.”

     However, Hein said based on the calculations provided, it may not be considered a loss of revenue.

     “But if the committee feels this is the avenue to go down, I can further explore it,” she offered. “I can go over the numbers with a third party because of the risk of miscalculating.”

     Hein told the board that any inconsistencies will come back and reflect poorly on the county.

     “We need to make sure we have concrete numbers because this is a risky avenue,” she added.

     If the county chose to not use the ARPA funds for revenue replacement, Hein said there are several other ways the money could be spent.

     “There is still a lot of uneasiness with a lot of counties about how to spent these funds,” Hein said.

     She also reminded the board of supervisors that because the county will be spending these federal funds over a period of several years, the county would be subject to an audit for each of those years.