No Matter Your Size, ARPA is an Opportunity for Your Town

On January 14th, Vermont Council on Rural Development (VCRD) hosted a webinar on the American Rescue Plan Act. They provided an overview of ARPA, and asked a few communities to present on how they plan to use ARPA funds. The webinar featured St Albans, a larger Vermont town with robust municipal staff; Jericho, a medium sized town with a small municipal staff, and a small town, Corinth, with a dedicated selectboard. Below is an outline, based on the VCRD webinar, of how these towns’ priorities fall and their plans to use ARPA funds, as well as processes they are using to make decisions and words of advice. You can watch the full webinar here. 

For comprehensive information on ARPA guidance, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is the go-to resource for Vermont communities. Visit their resource center online for timely information on ARPA.

Webinar Outline

St. Albans (large community with staff)- Presenter: Dominic Cloud, City Manager

• City Council does an annual goal setting exercise- staff are charged w/ implementing it and bringing forth creative ideas to respond to broad visions

• Neighborhood stabilization

• Downtown revitalization 

• Public Private Partnership model has been paramount for the downtown revitalization they’ve been doing for 7 years now — for redevelopment work — this model is now being used for the ARPA work

• Use market principles to drive development where it might not occur

• Using the strengths as a municipality — access to capital and ability absorb risk 

• Measure returns qualitatively and quantitatively

• Five Projects:

• Neighborhood Stabilization Pilot Project: handful of properties where a homeowner doesn’t have the means to fix up the property. ARPA money will be used to help fix up the outside of their place: 

• $10,000 total: $5,000 from town (as a gift) and $5,000 from property owner taken as a loan against the value of the property to be recovered in eventual sale (maturing w/ min interest rate, 2% a year) 

• Housing Project: Current landlord of a large multifamily is not reaching his potential as a property owner. There is a new person who wants to purchase the property, but doesn’t have enough money to pay for the phase 2 environmental. ARPA funds will be used for the phase 2 study. 

• Vacant Retail Spaces- Bike Shop: PPP model applied to these retail spaces. The town has been looking to get a bicycle shop in the downtown area. They finally struck a deal with a bicycle shop: the shop will sign a 5 year lease and for that they’ll get: $25,000 upon signing the lease, $25,000 when you open, and $50,000 over the five year lease. Additional $50,000 as a loan (1%) if they are having trouble buying bikes– ACCESS TO CAPITAL

• Vacant Retail Spaces- Donut Shop: Donut shop operating out of a food truck, and town wants to put them in brick and mortar. Donut shop needs a six figure investment to make the space viable.  Town will cover the renovations with ARPA funds.

• Vacant Retail Spaces- Restaurant: Space needs six figure renovation. Town decided to buy the building and then fix it up for the restaurant, and leasing it to the business. 

Jericho (smaller community with some staff)- Presenter: John Abbott, Town Administrator

• Community engagement, community engagement, community engagement: Link to survey and site: Join In Jericho https://jerichovt.org/arpa-funding-priorities

• Bang the Table platform for online engagement- has membership capacity

• Public survey- of the ARPA buckets, what would be the best way the public could conceive of such a large expenditure?– turning it into more human terms: If you have $100 and you could drop part of that into each bucket, how much and why?

• 300 survey responses through this platform

• Priorities identified in survey: Infrastructure and broadband, affordable housing

• Written feedback: Identifying the ideas that are new and unique, removing ideas that are repetitive/cross over

• Challenge: What’s next?

Corinth (small rural town with limited staff)- Presenter: Nick Kramer, Selectboard Member

• Politically purple

• Town plan word cloud: protect, preserve, rural character

• Values tradition– eg took 8 years of hot debate to build a new fire station

• Selectboard is contemplating how to approach this once in a lifetime funding in the cultural context of small town with the staffing limitations that they have

• General fund budget $500,000– ARPA fund about the same

• Moving cautiously, taking time

• Board Epiphany: We don’t have to go it along

• Set up an ARPA committee with representative cross section of community members– charged with running a community engagement process

• Timeframe: community engagement process over the next couple of months, postponed Town Meeting to May– gives time to run ARPA process– hope to have ARPA as a town meeting agenda item

• Committee to deliver recommendations to Selectboard, who will present back to the town

• Rely heaving on VLCT and RPC for technical advice

• Resources in any town, you just need to know where to look!

Don’t forget to take your time and think creatively about this once in a lifetime opportunity! You can find more information about the webinar at https://www.vtrural.org/leadership/workshops/library