photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

For the third week in a row, the Douglas County Commission will consider which county agencies should receive American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Commissioners will make their final decision at their Wednesday meeting, then will direct county staff to begin preparing award documents for ARPA funding recipients.

Since their June 15 meeting, commissioners have been narrowing down where they should direct the roughly $21 million in ARPA funding the county has left to distribute. Most recently, they voiced their agreement for using about a third of that money for the county government’s own project requests, a recommendation from county staff, and last week began to allocate the remaining chunk of funding to nonprofits and other organizations.

Of the 29 internal requests the county received, county staff indicated that all but four projects should receive funding. After setting aside 33% of the money for internal projects, commissioners have about $13.7 million in remaining funds to work with.

One additional wrinkle at this week’s meeting may involve freeing up some additional ARPA funding that has until now been set aside for an emergency. Last year, the commission decided to hold 10%, or $2,374,738, of the county’s ARPA funding for emergency purchases. To date, $750,827 of that portion has been used. Now, county staff is asking that the policy be formally rescinded, freeing up the remaining $1,623,911 for distribution.

That decision is on the commissioners’ consent agenda, so they’ll know whether the additional funding is on the table prior to their continued ARPA funding request discussion to follow.

So far, the working spreadsheet county staff has been editing throughout the process, which is included with this week’s agenda materials, lists 11 requests totaling around $10.6 million as selections to receive funding from the list of external agencies.

Some specific projects on that list include a $3 million request from the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority — amended to ask for $1 million less than was indicated in prior meeting materials — for a 32-unit expansion at its Clinton Place development, and a $400,000 ask from the Elizabeth B. Ballard Community Center to help with construction costs for a building expansion.

Wednesday’s business meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St. The meeting will also be available by Zoom. For meeting information, visit the county’s website: dgcoks.org/commissionmeetings.