Over three and a half years have passed since Congress passed and the president signed the American Rescue Plan Act.
The nearly $2 trillion economic stimulus package was intended, in part, to help local governments recover from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Southwest Colorado, that meant a windfall of cash that could be best used as elected officials saw fit. That’s a rarity, said Commissioner Matt Salka, chair of the Board of County Commissioners.
The city of Durango received $4.8 million; La Plata County received $10.9 million.
Across the country, some governments used the money to bolster or patch up slim sections of the budget. Others, including many in Colorado, invested heavily in law enforcement.
Locally, however, governments wielded the funds to support a wide variety of priorities, including food security, broadband access and housing.
It’s not often that governments are offered such a “shot in the arm,” as Mike French, Durango’s new prosperity officer, said.
Although the funds expire in 2026, both the city and the county are scrapping the bottom of the ARPA funding bucket.
“The day of ARPA is past us,” County Finance Director Adam Rogers remarked at a county budget meeting last week as officials discussed shrinking revenue streams.
Early on, the BOCC approved three expenditures of ARPA funds totaling $900,000.
That money helped secure a new HVAC system for the Durango-La Plata County Emergency Communications Center and a new ambulance for Durango Fire Protection District dedicated for mental health transports. It also kick-started the creation of an opioid harm reduction program at San Juan Basin Public Health (now run by the county health department following SJBPH’s dissolution).
That left about $10 million.
The board opted to divide that funding up to invest in three broad categories: social impacts of the pandemic, housing and broadband.
“Those were our priorities and our concerns,” Salka said.
Social impact grants received $3.5 million; broadband projects were to receive $2.5 million and housing projects were to receive $4 million.
The latter two categories each had over $1 million remaining this year, and so a total of $2 million will tentatively be directed to the county road and bridge department in the 2025 budget to make up for severe structural deficits that would have prevented any capital projects from happening.
When residents of the Westside Mobile Park came to the county with fears of eviction when the park went up for sale, commissioners used some of the housing money to create a $1.7 million revolving loan fund to support affordable housing.
The board also leveraged $500,000 to support a $4 million project to connect Pagosa Springs and Ignacio with reliable broadband connectivity along Colorado Highway 151.
“Our county government’s half a million ARPA (funding) turned into a $4 million-plus broadband project to tie two counties (together),” Salka said.
But the social impact funding had, arguably, the broadest, most immediate reach. It was a unique opportunity to bestow meaningful amounts of money upon organizations working to help the community.
In October 2022, the BOCC approved the recommendation of the Community Foundation Serving Southwest Colorado to allocate the $3.5 million to 13 different projects.
The projects ranged greatly in their focus.
Pine River Shares, a nonprofit focused on food equity and access in the Pine River Valley, used a $390,000 grant to purchase a 10½-acre farm, which grew 4,500 pounds of produce in its first season and fed 2,400 food insecure families.
In Western La Plata County, the local water authority used a $100,000 grant to build a water dock for area residents who are not connected to a water main.
Near Elmore’s Corner, Housing Solutions for the Southwest used a $55,000 grant to drill a new well at Southwest Horizon Ranch, a 61-unit affordable housing subdivision. The development is on its own well system, said Housing Solution’s Executive Director Elizabeth Salkind.
“Because our rents are set at an affordable level, we don’t have the option, for example, (to say) ‘Oh well, we’ll just raise the rent for everybody to cover the cost,’” she said. “… But that’s a large amount of money for us.”
The Hub Therapeutic Program, an alternative educational opportunity for middle and high school students who struggle in a traditional school setting, received the largest single grant of $625,000.
That grant has, among other things, allowed the program to expand the opportunities for prosocial community-based activities – essentially partnerships throughout the county that are driven by students’ learning desires.
Students in the Hub are taking music lessons, learning to draw graphic novels, working with San Juan Circus, taking skateboarding lessons and learning photography thanks to the grant, said Jason St. Mary, the Hub’s program director.
For a program that in its early years relied heavily on piecemeal funding from a number of partners, the large allocation meant increased stability across its departments.
“We can really use these funds to meet a lot of the basic needs for our students and families,” St. Mary said.
When Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet visited last year and heard a presentation on the county’s social impact grants, he left impressed.
“The chance for these projects to bear durable results that are going to last beyond the pandemic is one lesson we can take; the importance of collaboration is another lesson we can take,” he said.
Durango Chief Financial Officer Devon Schmidt said the city’s nearly $4.8 million in ARPA funds simultaneously represent immediate relief and long-term recovery.
The city must commit its funds by the end of this year, and it has until the end of 2026 to spend them, she said.
The one-time ARPA funds helped fund major developments like modular homes at the Gage Apartments and allowed the city to purchase land for future housing. It paid for food and utility tax rebates and afterschool programs for children. The projects ARPA bolstered will have lasting impacts on Durango's economic sturdiness and residents’ quality of life for years to come, Schmidt said.
Amid the heat of the pandemic, ARPA funded COVID-19 test kits for Durango Public Works employees and emergency sick leave, said Laura Reick, Public Works spokeswoman.
A series of ARPA grants from 2021 to 2024 funded Durango Parks and Recreation’s Gametime child care program for educational materials, creative play materials and cleaning supplies; and it helped Gametime meet other operational needs, said Guthrie Hardesty, Gametime director.
This year, Gametime received $12,023 in ARPA grant dollars.That’s a relatively small amount of money, but combined with similar grants since 2021, the extra funding’s impact is “immeasurable.”
Aside from funding operations, federal COVID-19-era funding helped Parks and Recreation hire additional staff members for its licensed child care Gametime program, which raised its capacity for more children, paid for tutoring for staff members and counseling for families from outside mental health professionals, and facilitated up to 100% Gametime enrollment discounts for families who needed it.
“We were very, definitely one of the social outlets for kids,” Hardesty said of Gametime in the early pandemic years. “They would arrive here to our program and get the interaction and engagement that they really critically needed, and having a staff that is able to help support that really makes a big impact, especially at that age.”
He said Gametime supports children in every aspect: educationally, socially and emotionally. In simple terms, the American Rescue Plan facilitated children’s ability to just be kids by giving them space to play, learn, make friends and express themselves; something the pandemic otherwise might have taken away from them.
French, Durango’s new prosperity officer charged with overseeing city tourism and housing operations, formerly took the helm of the La Plata Economic Development Alliance on the verge of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
He said he had spent most of his career in corporate America, and 30 days after joining the nonprofit Alliance, he was plunged into “crisis mode” as the pandemic gripped and squeezed the United States and the world.
ARPA, enacted to save the United States’ shuttered economy, is reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, he said.
He added that years from now, people will reflect on this time just as they do on Roosevelt’s policies that provided economic relief and stabilization during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
He said the city put $1.9 million toward critical housing initiatives such as the city’s rental assistance program Leasing for Locals; bridged the affordability gap for first-time homebuyers by supplying HomesFund, a mortgage assistance nonprofit, with funds for loans to give to vetted and approved applicants; and helped pay for land acquisitions for future housing projects.
In the past two years, the city has put ARPA funds toward monthly rental assistance for 30 units per year, homeownership subsidies for eight units, and predevelopment grants for a workforce housing catalyst fund managed by the La Plata Economic Alliance, he said. The catalyst fund has made 11 grants to projects that are planned for 464 units of workforce housing.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
cburney@durangoherald.com
