During a work session earlier this week, City Manager Nate Pagan reviewed possible ways to spend the $13.3 million the city will receive in ARPA funds. Pagan said the funds are received in half installments — one came in May 2021 and the other will come in May 2022.
Pagan said the money must go toward any of the following areas: public health emergency and health impacts, premium pay, revenue replacement, and investments in infrastructure.
Pagan said the key is to place the money in places where it won’t be added to recurring expenses.
For example, Pagan told City Commissioners they could allot $8.3 million to fully cover the revenue loss from the last year. Another project would be the York area drainage and stormwater project.
“We started a modeling project out there and we’re modeling the flow of water there,” Pagan said.
The York drainage project would cost around $4 million, said Pagan. He also suggested putting $2.5 million each toward Regional Water Resource Agency and Owensboro Municipal Utilities.
Pagan noted those four projects would cost about $17.3 million — roughly $4 million over the ARPA funding.
That does not include potential parks projects and populations impacted by COVID-19.
“I understand why (Mayor Tom Watson) you’re getting the requests from many agencies and entities because $13.3 million seems like a lot of money. However, when you’re talking about $3 million-$5 million projects at a time, you can see that can go very, very quickly with projects of that scale,” Pagan said.
Watson suggested that they could take less of the funds from the $8.3 million in the revenue lost section to fund other projects.
