By Dave Baumeister
County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – The Minnehaha County Commission met in a special session Tuesday morning to look at requests for $37.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds from the federal government.
These ARPA funds are part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress last March, and the funds received by the county were originally earmarked specifically for COVID relief measures, but there is pending action in Congress to expand the use of those funds.
Ben Kyte and Susan Beaman from the auditor’s office presented the five commissioners with a list of requests that office has received for a share of the “$37.5 million pie.”
Kyte first went over requests from other governing bodies around the county. The cities of Brandon, Hartford and Sioux Falls, along with the Minnehaha Community Water Corporation, and the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System made requests for roughly $66 million to fund a variety of water and sewage projects.
Beaman then discussed internal county requests, which were more linked to COVID expenses at the jail, court system, IT Department, and other mitigation efforts throughout the county.
According to slides prepared by the auditor, those items only came up to $26.5 million, or 40% of what the external bodies asked for.
The major external items came in the form of seven requests from five different entities.
The internal requests at the county level came from 10 departments for 31 different projects, some of which would be reimbursing the county for previously incurred COVID-related expenses.
In addition, the county had another $21.3 million in possible requests should Congress expand what the funds can be used for.
All in all, for the $37.5 million received, commissioners were looking at $113 million in possible requests.
While no action was taken on any of these matters at this meeting, Commissioner Jeff Barth said, “Obviously, we can’t fund all of these. I’d like to see what kind of money Brandon or Hartford has (for their projects) before we just throw money at them.”
All commissioners had questions about what the money can and cannot be used for, which will, no doubt, help them in considering their final decisions.
The commission will vote on some of the reimbursement items during the last meeting of 2021 on Tuesday, Dec. 28, but they will save most of their work on funding until after they re-organize on Jan. 4, 2022.
The next meeting will be at 9 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 21, on the second floor of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
