Columbus is taking steps to prepare to receive the first half of its funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, including how to document future expenditures made with those funds.
Columbus City Council has passed an ordinance creating the ARP Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund. While ordinances are typically required to be read at two council meetings in order to be approved, the council voted to suspend the rules and pass it on both readings in the same night on Tuesday.
Jamie Brinegar, the city’s director of finance, operations and risk, requested the action, as the city expects to receive approximately $3.85 million in the next week. The city is expecting a total allocation of approximately $7.7 million, with the second half arriving in 2022.
"These funds can be used for revenue recovery, nonprofit assistance, infrastructure, transportation, public facilities, economic development and regional collaboration," Brinegar said.
The ordinance states that business assistance is also an acceptable use of funds.
The Indiana State Board of Accounts is requiring communities to establish a "unique fund" to receive these monies and account for expenditures.
“This ordinance does not appropriate this money," he added. "It simply establishes the fund and outlines how the money can be spent. When the administration and the council determines how this money is to be spent, we’ll come with an appropriation for you.”
Mayor Jim Lienhoop said earlier this year that the city wants to be "thoughtful and cautious" about its use of funds and would begin the decision-making process by meeting with financial advisers from the Baker Tilly firm.
“Once we have a thorough understanding of what the money can be spent on, then we’ll sit down with department heads here in the city, and we’ll also sit down with some city council members to gain their understanding of what our needs might be,” he said in March. “And from that, we’ll come forward with a list — maybe a short list, maybe a long one — of what we would propose to spend the money on.”
He said that this list will then be taken to the city council for approval before expenditures can occur.
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According to the American Rescue Plan Act, local fiscal recovery funds are to cover costs incurred by Dec. 31, 2024 in the following categories:
- Responding to the public health emergency caused by COVID-19 or its “negative economic impacts”
- Providing “premium pay” to essential government workers or grants to employers of essential workers
- Providing for government services “to the extent of the reduction in revenue of such metropolitan city … due to the COVID-19 public health emergency”
- Making “necessary investments” in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure
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