WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday discussed potential uses for $2.2 million the town is in line to receive from the American Rescue Plan Act.

 

And it asked residents to come up with more ideas for the windfall.

 

The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed earlier this year in Washington, D.C., includes money designated for municipalities. Interim Town Manager Charlie Blanchard explained to the Select Board that the town already had received a little more than $1.1 million for costs incurred by Dec. 31, 2024. The remainder of its $2,222,073 allocation will be available no sooner than August 2022, Blanchard said.

 

Town Hall already has identified two modest expenditures that can be charged against the federal funds, he said: a $5,000 grant to the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce to promote tourism this past summer and a $38,101 grant to Berkshire Housing Development Corp. for unbudgeted expenses completing the 330 Cole Ave. affordable housing complex.

 

In addition, Blanchard suggested three more uses totaling less than $600,000 of the $2.2 million to address infrastructure needs: $500,000 for a sewer replacement project on South Street that was in the town's calendar year 2020 capital plan but shelved because of uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic; $60,000 for design work to replace the 1880s water main that serves a cluster of 20 homes in the White Oaks area north of Sand Springs Road; and $30,000 for a permanent solution to an erosion issue along the Hoosic River near the intersection of North Street (Route 7) and Syndicate Road.

 

The design of a permanent fix for the North Street issue is work the town is required to complete by next March under a Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection permit issued to allow installation of riprap at the erosion site this summer, Blanchard told the board. It is unknown the scale or potential cost of the permanent solution that engineers will design.

 

The White Oaks water system replacement project is estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $1.4 million, but Blanchard told the board that the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has told the town that project would be a candidate for funding under the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities project.

 

The notion of using ARPA funds to make a project "shovel ready" for a different infusion of federal funds appealed to one member of the Select Board.

 

"I like the idea of using these things for design dollars," Hugh Daley said. "Because then that's us using someone else's money to apply to use someone else's money."

 

The total of the expended funds ($43,101) and suggested uses in a memo Blanchard gave the Select Board comes to about $633,000 or 28 percent of the $2.2 million in local ARPA funding.

 

Unlike 2020's CARES Act stimulus bill, the uses of ARPA funds need not be directly tied to COVID-related expenses, but there are limitations on how municipalities can spend the money.

 

According to guidance on the commonwealth's website, there are four broad categories for uses of the local funds: to respond to the public health emergency with respect to COVID-19 or its negative economic impacts; to provide premium pay to employees providing essential work during the COVID-19 public health emergency; to provide government services to the extent of a government's reduction in revenue due to COVID-19; and to invest in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.

 

The state specifically notes that the ARPA funds cannot be used to offset property tax cuts.

 

"I wanted the board to think about what other possible uses for ARPA funds come to mind that we should be thinking about and considering," Select Board Chair Andy Hogeland said. "Town hall has their initial list. But the eligible projects are broader than that.

 

"This is an open invitation for the board and the town to look through the eligibility criteria … that gives you a general sense of what's allowed and what's not allowed. But I think at this point, we're looking for ideas. Take a look at the criteria and have at it. Let us know your thoughts, and we'll consider everything that comes in."

 

In other business on Monday, the board changed the term of one recently appointed member of the Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee from one year to two years and named another DIRE Committee member, Andrew Art, as a voting member of the Town Manager Search Advisory Committee. And Hogeland and Jeffrey Johnson agreed to work together on crafting the Select Board's report to the DIRE Committee on how the board has complied with a 2020 annual town meeting mandate to work on creating a more equitable, inclusive community.

 

During the public comment period at Monday's meeting, Janice Loux pressed the Select Board members on whether they were in favor of using transfers from other line items in the fiscal year 2022 budget to cover expenses related to a pair of severance agreements signed in FY21 or they would support the idea of a special town meeting, as suggested by a member of the town's Finance Committee last week.

 

Only two members of the Select Board directly answered the question. Wade Hasty, who was elected to the board in the spring, after the severance agreements were in place and the FY22 budget was finalized, said he would be comfortable with holding a special town meeting. Hogeland said that the line item transfer route would be more efficient and save the town the expense of holding a special town meeting.

 

During a protracted back and forth with the board, Loux suggested that the money needed to fill holes in the FY22 budget could detract from the town's ability to fully fund a study commissioned to assess what it means for community members to feel safe in Williamstown.

 

Johnson assured her that would not happen.

 

"I believe it's not if/or," he said. "It's how do we do both, and I'm absolutely committed to trying to figure out how to continue to fund the social work piece and the CARES project.

 

"If [Blanchard] makes a statement that we've hit a period where he is looking for input from the Select Board because the town can't figure out how to do this, that would be something in my head would mean we'd have to reconvene and figure out how to find the funding. That would be where special town meetings, and all those things, in my head, would come into play. … I just don't know if we're at that point."