PORT TOWNSEND — Requests for Jefferson County’s remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds are in, and there are more requests than there are funds.
The county received dozens of requests totaling more than $3 million, but there’s only $835,000 in uncommitted ARPA dollars remaining.
At their meeting Monday, the Board of Jefferson County Commissioners said they would individually rank each of the 47 project submissions in order of priority and then consolidate those rankings at their next meeting on Feb. 21.
“Some of them are going to have to be zero,” District 3 Commissioner Greg Brotherton said.
Commissioners had previously approved ARPA allocations on a case-by-case basis but said at a Jan. 9 meeting a formal process for local organizations to apply for that funding had never been established. Because of the high demand for government funding, commissioners said they wanted to draft guidelines for allocating the remaining funds.
Commissioners asked local organizations to submit proposals ranging between $20,000 and $100,000, and they said they would prioritize those aimed at economic development that were able to leverage other funds and that had not yet received ARPA or Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funding.
Most of the submitted requests were within the stated range, but some exceeded that amount. The largest request was for more than $600,000 from the Chimacum School District to develop the Chimacum Creek Primary School campus into a playground and community sports field, and Jefferson County Public Works submitted a request for $200,000 for embankment stabilization on Shine Road.
Some organizations submitted multiple requests for separate projects totaling more than $100,000.
Among the requests were $81,902 from Bayside Housing and Services for a director of support services; $81,200 from East Jefferson Fire Rescue for a propane generator and water-heating support; and $100,000 for Community Build for the construction of an indoor bathroom and laundry facility at the Caswell-Brown Village.
County Administrator Mark McCauley noted at the meeting that some in Congress had suggested taking back unallocated ARPA funds as a condition of raising the nation’s debt ceiling.
U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, who represents the 6th Congressional District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula, told Clallam County commissioners on Friday that there was a “not a zero risk” to leaving those dollars unallocated.
The Federal Reserve took action last month to keep the government running through at least June, according to The Associated Press.
________
Reporter Peter Segall can be reached at peter.segall@peninsuladailynews.com.
