ARP Committee
I have been meaning to send an update on what the ARP committee is working on. Here is the lay of the land. This is a lot of information but I am playing catch up.
“The purpose of the Committee is to provide financial oversight of the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Funds of the American Rescue Plan of 2021. It will issue reports upon and review the use of funds as it deems appropriate. Further, it will collect, consider, and recommend appropriate uses of the ARP Funds as designated by the Metropolitan Council disbursement plan. The Committee will submit its reports and recommendations to the Mayor, the Director of Finance, and the Metropolitan Council not later than June 30, 2025”
Here is one of our guidance. I will try not to add so many attachments but this one is important for reference. Our plan for fund allocation is heavily influenced by this guidance.
The U.S Department of Treasury allocated a coronavirus relief grant in the amount of $259,810,600 to respond to the health emergency. Before the committee convened, the council passed a resolution allocating some of the funds. They were as follows.
Some other funding that some departments have received are as follows.
MNPS: 276 Million (ESSER Funds)
Heath Department: 26 Million
Grant from the state department. Some of the funds that they charged to the CARES funding, they will charge to the grant instead freeing up some reserves.
MAC: 20.8 Million (ERAP 1), 9.2 Million (ERAP 2)
They still have access to 23-24 million that went to the state but was intended for Davidson County through ERAP 1. We received 23 million total from ERAP 2. We have received 40% (9.2 million) . We will receive the other 60% (13.8 million) once we have spent 9.2. The rest is currently with treasury.
At this past council meeting we allocated 3 million to MAC. This was to make up for some of the holes left from ERAP 1. ERAP 1 required people to make less than 80% of the average median income. If you were a dollar over, you did not qualify. We made this allocation to try and rectify that.
It’s also important to note where CARES left off. In December council made the final recommendation to approve 29.8 million to be used on public safety salaries. These savings created a reserve. Our consultants also estimate around 13.5 in FEMA claims to apply for.
New recommendation for council:
The committee has two recommendation for council
Fire Department- $4,745,500
When Chief Swann came before the committee on the 9/8, he gave us an update on how covid had impacted his department. At the time 73 people were off because off covid. About 40 of those because of family with covid. He stated that the light fleet needed to be addressed in order to be effective. They want to be able to send a small crew instead of sending the full crew and be able to get into tight areas like downtown. Some of our fleets are about 10 years old and breaking down. This helps cut down on response time. Our cardiac monitors are dated and need to be replaced. With the new monitors they will be able to communicate in real time with the physicians. One thing that was mentioned about the showers is that if we have another disaster or some type of event, we will be able to take them there and help the community.
2. Office of Family Safety- $3,148,980
The initial request was for one year, but we decided to recommend enough funding for two because it is difficult to find case workers who only have a job funded for one year. The number of clients increased by 20%. The number of sessions with clients has increased by 71%. During the pandemic more people are staying home and that has caused the number of abuse cases they have seen to increase. The severity of the cases has also increased. There is also a line item for an emergency fund recommendation to help clients. There is money for therapy clinics. There are several waitlist for therapy for adults and children.
Family and children services- 2 months (2.5 therapist needed to alleviate the waitlist)
Mary Parish Center- 2-4 week (Need 1 therapist)
MNPD- 1 month for English, 3 months for Spanish (Need 5 therapist) They are also shifting to acute crisis
Nashville Children’s Alliance- 9 months for English, 6 moths for Spanish (Need 3 therapist)
Sexual Assault Center- 4-6 months for adults
These were only some of their examples. We have requested, if approved by the council, that there be reporting from all the partners who would receive funding for free therapy. We want to make sure that if there is a community that is not being reached, that we are able to address it sooner rather than later. This means ethnicity, zip code, etc.
Framework
We have an outline for a framework that the committee will need to approve. It has many of the elements that several committee members have wanted to prioritize. The committee agreed that is important to have community input. For reporting purposes, we are suppose to explain what efforts we have made to treasury in regards to community input. The committee itself can count as community input, but that was not what we wanted to see. Our plan is to take the framework and create a platform on HubNashville where the community can tell us their needs and priorities and make sure that the community agrees with the direction. We will hopefully have more information on this at our next meeting.
I want to highlight some key fields of interest. During this pandemic we have had many evictions happening. Several of them preying on people who did not know their rights. While we have money to address rent and utility relief, there is an area we have not covered. There is still a need for free legal services. We have great organizations that are already doing some of this work like legal Aid, but it has still been a struggle to find legal services. There are still some gaps. An example of this is legal aid not being able to represent someone without legal status due to the funding they receive containing certain restrictions. When MAC came before us they also stated that this is where they are seeing a need.
The Health Department has yet to come before us , but one thing we have been told is that it is very difficult to staff testing sites, vaccination sites, etc. In our guidance, we have a category that says we can use ARP funds for premium pay. This would increase an essential worker’s total pay above 150% of the state or county annual wage. I am interested to hear from our health department on where they would stand on this. On another note, other cities have begun to look at incentives for vaccines. I believe we should discuss this as well.
The following is a DRAFT framework. As stated we will be reaching out to the community to make sure we are on the right track.
Now you’re caught up.
-Sandra
