By JEFF MORRIS
Supervisor Ellen Calves led a discussion at Tuesday’s town board meeting about theremaining $1.8 million in funding the town received under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
“We have spent some of it,” she said of the pandemic recovery funds, “and our deadline is to allocate where we are going to be spending the rest of the money by the end of this year.”
Under ARPA rules, the town has until Dec. 31, 2024, to commit the funds and until Dec. 31, 2026, to expend the funds, with all work performed and completed.
Calves said they have been holding back, waiting to see if grants were obtained and they wanted to use the ARPA funding to enhance and support some things that went along with the grants — Bedford Village sewers being one of them.
“It’s our understanding now that we will not be notified, or have even a clue if we’re going to get that grant, until after December of this year, or probably January or February of next year,” she said.
That means they cannot in good faith apply the money to a project they are not sure they’ll even be able to do, she said.
Referring to guidance the town received from accounting firm PKF O’Connor Davies in 2021, Calves said they are allowed to use the money for regular government expenses, as well as a number of special uses. There is a lot of paperwork and reporting required to provide funds to any outside organizations, according to the federal guidelines, she said.
“It’s our understanding now that we will not be notified, or have even a clue if we’re going to get that grant, until after December of this year.” — Supervisor Ellen Calves
Among the uses to which the town has put the money, Calves listed $200,000 toward road paving in 2022; hiring the Bedford Promoter for two years for $35,000; $49,187 allocated to the Bedford Free Library for HVAC upgrades; map plan, report and legal services for the Bedford Village Sewer District at $40,000, $5,451 for Bedford Village Sewer engineering, and $100,000 toward Bedford Village Sewer design and bidding, which has to move forward by the end of the year; $4,000 toward a grant writer to apply for a drug-free communities THRIVE grant in 2024; $50,000 that has been committed to, but not yet spent, by the Bedford Hills Free Library for a facilities assessment, which the library needs to verify it has a plan to spend or else will have to be reallocated; and $70,000 for a generator for Katonah Village Library, which has been put on hold while they do capital planning and which the library requested be reallocated toward their facilities master plan study.
At the board’s last meeting, she noted, they had approved $350,000 towards the affordable townhouses to be built on South Bedford Road, supplementing money Blue Mountain Housing Development Corp. is receiving from the county and other sources to help develop that project.
Calves had invited Tom McGrath and Julie Stern of Blue Mountain to present details about a couple of other projects for which they would like funding. Stern highlighted 123 Valley Road, Katonah, saying it’s what she calls “naturally occurring affordable housing” — existing property, privately owned, where the rents have been kept affordable. It has primarily one-bedroom units. She said the goal in Blue Mountain acquiring the property is to maintain and preserve affordable housing for the county and the town.
“It is very important in my mind to keep this from being developed as a high rent project,” Stern said, adding all they would be doing is acquiring it, slowly doing some rehab and repairs, and ensuring it meets all their standards for safety, energy efficiency, and standard business management practices.
She said they had run into some gaps in covering the soft costs during the acquisition process, and were requesting $104,500 to cover the additional expenses. McGrath said they are right at the end of the process and have gone back to the county to apply for additional flex funds, after having been the first project awarded such funds, but the county’s program is now oversubscribed. “If the opportunity presents itself for the town to help us out with this it would be a great help, and I think we’d be able to close this property within a week to two weeks.”
Their second request was for Doyle House, four units in downtown Katonah, which Blue Mountain has owned for 30 years, and which Stern said has existed under the radar and has never had a vacancy.
She said it is in need of revitalization, including updated kitchens and baths, and energy efficiency upgrades. They are requesting $250,000 for all the improvements, Stern said, and $60,000 as a reserve to keep Blue Mountain liquid.
Calves suggested also using ARPA funding to continue the work of Laurie Hillyard as Bedford Promoter for two more years, saying she has made inroads with a lot of businesses and helped Bedford Hills come together, is planning to use DIG grant money for more activities, and gained collaboration among the three hamlets for the Art Crawl.
Public Works Commissioner Kevin Winn noted they have spent about $6,000 on Bedford Village sewer design, to which they had allocated about $100,000.
“The intent was to move forward with some of the slower parts of the design in order to be more ready when and if we get grants, which we feel good about but there’s no guarantee,” he said.
The point, Winn said, is that he doesn’t think they’re going to spend anywhere near the $100,000 they got. “I think we’ll be able to return about $80,000 of that money.”
Calves said hopefully the grant will give them everything they need, if and when a sewer district is formed.
“So that’s good news, a little more money for us to figure out,” she said. “I think it leaves us with $600,000 or $700,000 if we move forward with some of these allocations.”
She said they had allocated some toward paving in the past, and that would be a good place to put a good chunk of the funds, since it is a constant need. Winn agreed, noting it would be a relatively quick way of spending the money not requiring a lot of design or implementation time, and would offset some capital borrowing they might otherwise incur.
As it was a work session, the board did not vote on any of the spending ideas.