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Just in case you are upset by the above articles and want to contact your legislator...
Local News:
The Etowah City Commission held a capital improvement workshop last Thursday to discuss the various ways the city could utilize their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
The meeting was open to the public as the city hoped to receive feedback from the citizens of Etowah on items they viewed as a top priority.
“The commissioners have in front of them a presentation that we did sometime last year when this ARPA money came to light,” said Etowah City Manager Russ Blair. “We have $1.36 million and some change sitting in a bank account. We have the money sitting in hand at this point.”
According to Blair the funds can be used for anything that qualifies as government services, but cannot be used to reimburse cost incurred by the government before March 3,2021; they can’t be used to replenish or make contributions to rainy day funds or other reserves; they can’t be used to pay interest, principal or cost on debt; and they can’t be placed into a pension fund.
“That begs the question on how we will spend our $1 million,” he said. “We have a lot of needs and we could easily spend $22 million ... We need to come up with a method to narrow the scope of our projects.”
The city has until December of 2024 to commit the funds and until December of 2026 to have the money spent.
“We have identified a long list of things that we view as needs,” he noted. “That could be anything from infrastructure, sidewalks, the walking track at the L&N Depot, parking facilities and more. There are numerous items just for infrastructure needs.”
Though the commissioners had the comprehensive list of needs available to them, Blair stated that the list, as a PowerPoint, will be available to the public through the city website at a future date.
Aside from reoccurring projects, some new needs also made their debut during the meeting, such as the police department outgrowing the Etowah Police Station, placing ballfields around the community center and more. One of those was topics was discussed during the Etowah Planning Commission meeting on Monday.
“Piedmont’s silos will be over 100 feet tall and in order for the design to be approved the city has to be able to provide adequate fire service, so the conversation has to begin with Piedmont on how we make up the difference,” Blair said.
Etowah Mayor Burke Garwood noted that the city could quickly use all of the ARPA funds on any of the city’s needs simply due to the cost.
“If we were to take on one or two projects it’s almost going to take the money to match the funds up,” Garwood stated. “It costs a lot of money to spend money nowadays.”
The public audience in attendance voiced their thoughts on what they believed the city should prioritize, ranging from taking care of the depot to working on the fire department.
While this meeting focused bringing focal points to light, the city commission agreed to host another meeting in the future with the intent of narrowing down a more organized list of needs.
Just a side note: When this act was passed not one Republican voted for this support to our communities, not one...
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