ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The end of 2024 saw leaders with Seward County finalize a plan for the use of $4.16 million the county received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
ARPA was created as a response to the economic and public health impacts the COVID-19 pandemic had on life across the country.
The plan provided large sums of money to be distributed to state, local and tribal governments to aid in recovery efforts. Seward County Administrator April Warden said when county leaders were notified they were getting money from ARPA, a request for proposal was put out to seek a professional consulting firm to provide expertise on how to augment county staff’s capabilities to ensure spending complied with federal regulations and maximized the beneficial use of the money.
“As with a lot of programs, those rules change throughout the process, so you always want to make sure you’re following the regulations and what is defined as a use for that money and make sure you’re doing everything properly,” she said.
The Georgia-based firm iParametrics was chosen to guide county leaders through the process of spending the ARPA money, and Warden said in reviewing options for using the funds, the county opened a process in which each department could submit three projects each for review.
“We asked them to rate those from low, medium or high priority,” she said. “They could only submit one in each category. We wanted it to benefit the department, but we also took into consideration how it would benefit the citizens of Seward County as a whole when we did that.”
The process of spending the ARPA money was similar to the process county officials went through a few years earlier when the county received $6.4 million from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and Warden said what leaders learned from that experience was quite useful when it came time to use the ARPA funds.
“I think that helped in getting used to the reporting part of things and how we had to do it with the Department of Treasury,” she said. “The programs were different in what was an allowable expense and what you could use the money for, but you at least knew things could change as they went through the process and paying attention to all the updates they did. They often did webinars to introduce us to new ideas, and we stayed in contact with our consultant because we knew they were staying up on everything and were working with other agencies besides ourselves to make sure we were all staying in compliance.”
Warden, though, did say the CARES money was used for completely different projects from the ARPA funding.
“We helped people at businesses in times of need to be able to keep their doors open or when they were forced to close to help offset some of those costs,” she said. “We helped a lot of people at that time with food banks and with rental assistance.”
Contrastly, Warden said ARPA funds have allowed the county to make some repairs to badly deteriorating infrastructure such as the roof at the courthouse, the courthouse remodel itself, EMS facility upgrades inside and out, rodeo arena bleachers, kalwall window replacement at the Activity Center, the Ag Building floor, grandstand roof and the grandstand concrete work.
Warden said some of these projects are still ongoing, and they will have to be completed by Dec. 31, 2026. She added the funding enabled the county to make some equipment purchases for Rural Fire, which she said not only aid in safety, but also helped with the county’s rating from the Insurance Service Office.
“We were able to purchase the breathing apparatuses for them and two ladder trucks,” she said.
Warden said the biggest need community wise is reliable broadband infrastructure, and through ARPA, the county was able to assist two local companies, IdeaTek and EPIC Touch, in enhancing service in the community.
Workforce issues were likewise a problem following the pandemic, so county commissioners used some of the ARPA money to provide retention and longevity bonuses, as well as continuing education and premium pay for health department nurses.
Warden talked about some of the other uses for the money.
“Seward County was still using an AS400 core software application, and we were able to convert to a PC-based software solution,” she said. “As a community, we addressed the need for Road and Bridge concerns from equipment to the replacement of the Massoni Bridge. We were able to purchase a salt spreader for Road and Bridge, which has come in handy this winter, and utilize funds for the engineered drawings and plans as well as the geological testing for the Massoni Bridge project.”
Some community members asked why some of the money was not used for road projects the county recently identified in a plan for overlay work in 2025. Warden said this was due primarily to timing.
“The rules changed frequently with allowable expenses,” she said. “However, the cost of doing road repairs is quite expensive, and from seeing the projects that were selected, we had a lot of building needs, equipment and such too.”
Warden said county leaders were also waiting to see if grant funds would be received from the Kansas Department of Transportation’s Cost Share and High Risk Rural Roads programs.
“Then you do have to wait on the bidding process with KDOT, so there was a timing issue,” she said. “I am not saying they couldn’t have used some of the funds, but it would have wiped the majority of the funds out, and the other projects would not have been accomplished.”
With the deadline for final plans to be outlined and determined by the end of 2024, Warden said while the county has until the end of 2026, to spend the ARPA money and complete the planned projects, those plans are not allowed to be changed from what was finalized by county commissioners and other leaders.
“We had to have binding documents in place by 2025 as to how we were going to spend the money,” she said. “We had to consider and determine realistic timeframes and what could actually be completed by 2026 or what could be delivered by 2026 to utilize the funding and not lose it or have to repay it.”
As an example, Warden talked about the recent ambulance ordered by Seward County EMS in 2023 and delivered in January.
“We have to consider how long it takes us to get things now since the pandemic,” she said. “If we wanted to allocate funds, would we really be able to finish that by the deadline? Would we really be able to order and get something here by the deadline? All of that was taken into consideration.”
Overall, Warden said the experience with both the CARES and ARPA money was quite beneficial.
“Bottom line, I feel we wouldn’t be able to commit many of the projects we did without the funding,” she said. “With future planning, yes, they would’ve been worked into the budget along the way, but we would not have been able to tackle them in the short timeframe we’ve been able to do now.”
As with many federal funding programs, Warden said rules change from time to time, and she said having iParametrics guiding county officials through the process and making sure they were meeting program requirements was and will continue to be quite beneficial.
“They will continue to do that,” she said. “We will continue to have reporting periods we have to go through until everything is closed out in 2026.”
