It’s about time to make a decision on who will help the county disperse $2.4 million in federal relief funds.
Commissioners plan to take some time Monday to discuss administration of the American Rescue Plan Act funds. They’ve had about a month to consider proposals from two nonprofit groups, but also debated whether to keep the process in-house and either hire or assign the job to a county employee.
Meanwhile, various groups continue to ask the county for a piece of the pie. Commissioners heard two more requests at their meeting Tuesday morning, from the Humboldt Housing Authority for help with sidewalks and from Rural Water District No. 8 for water line replacement.
Representatives from both the Southeast Kansas Regional Planning Commission and Thrive Allen County were on hand Tuesday to clarify their proposals.
Matt Godinez of Chanute is executive director of the SEKRPC, which has its offices there.
Godinez proposed administering the funds for a 5% fee, roughly $120,000. He outlined the differences between their plan and Thrive.
“We are just about compliance. We are going to help out with all the federal reporting for the economic development districts,” Godinez said.
He outlined the process: The county clerk receives applications and turns them over to the SEKRPC to make sure they meet federal requirements. SEKRPC then shares its findings with the county. The commissioners would decide whether to approve the requests, and SEKRPC would handle any required reports after that.
“We do the vetting. We will provide no opinions. We just provide facts,” he said.
The requests so far have been quite varied, and SEKRPC would use its resources to make sure the funding meets federal requirements throughout the entire process, Godinez said.
Commissioners also discussed the possibility of administering the ARPA funds themselves. They asked Godinez if his organization would still provide guidance, or consider some type of hybrid agreement where SEKRPC would serve in more of a consulting role.
“We’ll always assist when we can. If it goes into a deeper dive, there would need to be discussion on what that would look like,” Godinez said.
As for a consulting role, he said, “We haven’t done that. I don’t know what that would look like. But there’s a lot of this we haven’t done before.”
He also advised commissioners to take advantage of existing resources — both his organization and Thrive — before taking on new responsibilities. Commissioners have floated the idea of hiring their own grant writer; both SEKRPC and Thrive have proven track records in that area, he said.
“You have a lot of talent locally who do it for free. Please use us to write grants.”
John Brocker, a former commissioner who serves on the SEKRPC board, encouraged the county to take advantage of the organization’s services.
