While receiving $32 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) may be considered something of a windfall for Yellowstone County, there’s a lot of needs in the county and it goes quickly, according to Yellowstone County Commissioners.
The commissioners and other county officials are in the process of identifying priorities while trying to sort out the state and federal rules about how they can spend the money. Time frames imposed by federal regulations limit substantially their options, but, fortunately, Yellowstone County had several projects in the planning stages which also happen to qualify as permissible expenditures by ARPA.
County Commissioner Don Jones said that counties without qualified projects already in the planning may not be able to meet the late summer deadline.
Commissioners are working on meeting their own internal deadline of mid-July to determine what projects they want to set as priorities to obligate in spending the first half of the ARPA grant – -$15.6 million—which has already been released to the county. ARPA requires that the monies issued to counties and municipalities be spent by Dec. 31, 2024
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