Town commissioners discuss how to use $3.65 million in ARPA funding

Federal COVID-19 relief money is heading to Longboat Key. Millions, in fact.

The question now for Town Commissioners? How to spend it. And while the options for the money due -- the town is  to receive $3,654,228 as part of the $350 billion in COVID-19 relief funds provided by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) -- aren't limitless, there are broad possibilities..

Federal eligibility rules offer four categories: 

• Replacing lost public sector revenue for government services;
• Negative economic impacts of COVID-19; 
• Premium pay for essential workers; 
• Improvements in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.

For starters, Town Manager Tom Harmer said the town is estimates it has lost $2,196,420 as a result of the pandemic, which started in March 2020.

“That’s not audited yet,” Harmer said. “We want to audit that calculation to make sure we’re all comfortable with it.”

It would leave the town with $1,457,808 remaining.

During the Town Commission’s Oct. 18 retreat, Vice Mayor Mike Haycock was among the commissioners who wanted to see the money put toward advancing the redundant pipeline project, and learning more about sea-level rise and stormwater issues.

“This is kind of like free money,” Haycock said. “Why wouldn’t you put it against a few of our most important priorities?”

At the retreat, commissioners ranked the town’s long-term issues in order of importance. Dealing with the sewer line that runs under Sarasota Bay to a mainland treatment plant and sea-level rise and stormwater management were the top two.

The town has the funding to conduct an assessment this fiscal year of flooding and drainage issues for both the Buttonwood Harbor neighborhood and Sleepy Lagoon. However, the town has not set a budget to actually address the drainage issues after the assessments are conducted.

“You may want to put it toward the drainage issue because we don’t have any money set aside for that,” Harmer said.

The assessments are expected to provide the town with a scope of what kind of corrective action is necessary.

“Until these analyses are done, we won’t exactly know what the proposed solutions are and how much to apply to them,” Public Works Director Isaac Brownman said.

In September, Longboat Key has received about $1.83 million of the total. The town is expected to receive the other half of the funds in a year.

While the town has until Dec. 31, 2026, to spend the money from the federal government, it must allocate the funds by Dec. 31, 2024.

Among the things the federal dollars can't be used for include: 

• Allocating the money to directly or indirectly offset tax reductions, delay a tax or tax increase;
• Payments into any pension funds;
• Payments for debt services;
• Payments into a reserve or rainy-day fund;
• Projects or services that fall outside the spending categories.

Mayor Ken Schneier said he wanted to make sure using the ARPA funding doesn’t impede the town’s ability to secure grants or other funding sources.

“If we were to somehow be able to get grants or other county monies ... we wouldn’t want to forego any of that by right now applying any of the money that we available to us to those costs,” Schneier said.