By L. Parsons On April 5, the Navajo County Board of Supervisors held a work session to discuss improvement projects and the anticipated federal funding from the American Recovery Plan Act. The Act, also referred to as the American Rescue Act is a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus plan passed by Congress and signed in to law by President Joe Biden on March 11. It allocates $350 billion in emergency funds for state, local, territorial and tribal governments to, “Remedy the mismatch between rising costs and falling revenues,” according to the United States Department of the Treasury. Following the meeting Assistant County Manager Bryan Layton said the county could see $21 million to address infrastructure and development projects countywide. “That is what is projected but we have not received those funds yet. We are still pending specific instruction from the Treasury Department about the uses, timing and what is and isn’t allowable. We hope that will be soon, perhaps by the end of the month. In anticipation of that, we huddled in to start to lay the framework on how to think and approach this funding.” Layton continued, “We have the potential here and the opportunity to do something really impactful and really long lasting. We want to be thoughtful and deliberate about how these funds are used and allocated.” He explained that the county staff, including himself put together a set of guiding principles that will help make some of the decisions on spending. “When resources like this become available, everyone is going to come to the table with great ideas. The question was how do you discuss and decide on needs versus wants and also prioritize those? That’s why we put together what we see as guiding principles. The biggest takeaways were that projects needed to be affordable, sustainable and have long lasting positive effects. Part of that is that we want to avoid creating new programs that don’t have potential for long term funding sustainability. We want to focus on projects that benefit the largest amount of people in the broadest area possible.” The work session was an opportunity for all of the district supervisors to bring forth their thoughts and ideas on the topics of the key pillars of Navajo County. Quality of life, public safety, economic development, transportation, public health, education, criminal justice and county services were all listed on the agenda. Low spending over the last few years has allowed the county to afford some basic things this year. Layton continued, “Our finance director Jason Vowell gave us an overview of what our budget is looking like. Revenue, surprisingly is actually doing well. Our sales tax is better than expected. With that, it’s important to note that the mindset of our department officials, our county officials has not changed. They are still very frugal. On the expense side, we are trending below budget. Because of that, we will be able to do some improvements in our offices this year. Those improvements will include things like paint, office chairs and audio video equipment in our court rooms.” Beyond that, according to Layton, using the American Rescue Plan Act funds will require more discussion and decision making. He said, “One of the big things is broadband, we know that. We recently contracted with Magellan (a broadband advisory group) so they are coming up with a plan. The great thing is, this will fold into a larger regional plan, which will then fold in to a state plan.” Vice President of Digital Innovation at Magellan Jory Wolf addressed the board during the work session. According to Layton, Wolf anticipates more grant money becoming available from the Biden administration for broadband specifically. “We need to be ready as a county to help supplement those grants with matching funds or just funding studies, we need to be in a position to be flexible with the broadband plan. So that is one of the larger things we will likely spend the ARPA money on.” County staff and supervisors also discussed planning and zoning as it relates to new building permits. “Building inspections and new building permits are up. It is nice to see, but we need to respond in-kind to the demand. Public Works Director John Osgood let us know that we need some more bodies in that department to keep up. We will likely be adding some resources there and will be waiting for an official proposal from Osgood. He also talked about code enforcement. As a county, we just don’t do enough code enforcement and that really deteriorates relationships between neighbors. We need to put resources toward code enforcement.” Road conditions were not left out of the conversation, Layton said. “We want to get to the point where we have more paved roads than unpaved and we are moving toward that. “ More work sessions and round table discussions are on the horizon for the Board of Supervisors and county staff as federal funding is allocated. Layton concluded, “The board liked the direction our guidelines and ideas were going in, so we are going to go ahead with that. The thing to keep in mind is that our goal is to benefit the largest number of Navajo County citizens in a way that is sustainable and equitable. This is a lot of money, but it isn’t a lot of money, and we have to remember that it is a onetime funding opportunity. This county is huge and we have a super diverse population, so prioritizing things is going to be key.”
