County board OKs panel to spend ARPA dollars

Oconto County Board Chairman Alan Sleeter hopes to have a slate of supervisors by the board’s September meeting who are willing to serve on a new recreation committee to help allocate the county’s remaining federal pandemic relief funds.

The county received $7.367 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, the bill Congress passed to help communities recover from the effects of the economic shutdowns ordered in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. County Administrator Erik Pritzl told the board Aug. 24 that about $1.9 million remained in the account designated as “capital projects to be determined.”

Under the conditions of ARPA, the money must be allocated by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026, Pritzl said. The bill gives county the option to form a recreation committee to review potential local projects.

“There’s a number of communities that have been asking about American Rescue Plan Act capital projects,” Pritzl said. “I’ve heard about a baseball field. I’ve heard about park improvement. The other one might be a trail of some sort. There’s different projects being discussed, but there isn’t funding available for these projects. Sometimes people stop thinking about projects because there isn’t any money.”

There’s an exhaustive list of items that could be considered recreational projects, he said.

“It’s pretty open,” Pritzl said. “What we’re talking about here is creating a committee to look at requests and to allocate some of our ARPA funding to these requests.”

The committee would dispense relatively small amounts of money that communities or nonprofit organizations could use for the projects, but the ARPA funds may not exceed 30% of the total project cost, Pritzl said.

The county board approved a plan to include up to $200,000 for the five-member committee to allocate. The board would elect committee members at its Sept. 21 meeting, and the panel would sunset at end of 2026 or when the money runs out, Pritzl said.

“I’d like to have representation from each corner of the county, and preferably supervisors who have some sort of recreation background,” Sleeter said.

Earlier in the Aug. 24 meeting, the county board approved using another $300,000 for a pulverizing and paving project along 2.2 miles of County Road W from LaFave Road to the Marinette County line.

wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com