photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

The Douglas County Commission began the process of narrowing the scope for deciding where to allocate the county's remaining American Rescue Plan Act funding during a Wednesday afternoon work session.

Douglas County won’t be able to satisfy every agency requesting American Rescue Plan Act funds, but it might be able to point some of them toward other sources of federal funding, county leaders said on Wednesday.

Leaders also said they would be less interested in giving more pandemic aid to entities that had already received funding earlier in the pandemic — including schools and municipal governments.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the county has just over $21 million in unobligated ARPA funds to distribute, but agencies from around the county have sent in letters of intent for funding requests that total nearly $77 million. Much of the discussion at the County Commission’s work session on Wednesday focused on ways to narrow those requests down.

Brooke Sauer, Douglas County’s finance coordinator, said one way might be to let agencies know about other funding sources that they could use, such as federal infrastructure and broadband funding. She and Commissioner Shannon Portillo were both interested in finding a way to communicate that to agencies that might be eligible for those other pools of federal money.

“I would love to follow up and let them know these funds are available,” Sauer said. “When we talk about two separate pools of funding that are available for the same thing, leveraging the most federal dollars in our community is going to be key to getting these projects done in a way that we’re bringing more money here to our local community than if it were to just come from one source.”

But not all of the projects will be eligible for other pools of federal money, and the county will still need ways to prioritize the requests. And that might mean giving lower priority to agencies that got funding earlier in the pandemic.

Commissioner Shannon Reid said she was “hesitant” about giving priority to requests from municipalities and schools, rather than other entities that hadn’t received any aid dollars yet.

For Portillo, that hesitation extended to faith organizations, as well — at least those that were seeking funding specifically for a single church congregation. The commissioners agreed that bigger community organizations, like a faith-based coalition, would better align with the ways they’d like to see ARPA funds allocated in terms of overall community impact.

Commissioner Patrick Kelly, meanwhile, said his biggest concern was about whether projects could sustain themselves after the one-time ARPA aid had been spent.

“I’m all for innovative things, but we have to make sure those innovative things can be sustained down the line,” Kelly said.

Portillo said she’d like to see the county develop a “scoring matrix” to help prioritize which projects would be best to pursue, with some of the above factors potentially affecting that score.

As for the types of requests they’re looking for, commissioners agreed that they wanted projects where multiple agencies that filled similar needs could collaborate.

“Collaboration will be a key factor to me, because I think that’s something we value very highly in this community, and I think it speaks to the spirit of really thoughtfully, intentionally making a proposal that maximizes these dollars in a sustainable way,” Reid said.

Reid said the use of ARPA funds is an opportunity to create a lasting impact in the community and move toward communitywide goals.

Commissioners also indicated that it would be important not to neglect some of the internal requests coming from county offices. Portillo said the county’s internal structure is “incredibly important” and has a communitywide impact.

Between now and June, agencies will next have to submit a request for proposals, which announces and describes a project and solicits bids from qualified contractors to complete it. The county will tentatively begin accepting those requests in mid-March, and they’ll be due by May 2 at the latest. County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said entities interested in requesting ARPA funding would still be able to apply for funding during that process, even if they didn’t submit a letter of intent.

June 15 and 22 are tentative dates when the commission plans to meet for further ARPA work sessions and to make final funding decisions.