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Good afternoon Chair Stek and Commissioners,
We are pleased to provide you with all the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding requests that were submitted through our community engagement process. We received 319 funding proposals (this number includes duplicates) from individuals and community organizations. Additionally, 14 internal department priorities were added to the list for your consideration.
Our Guidehouse consultants have carefully reviewed all the proposals alongside our internal review committee. While we do not have enough money to fund a vast majority of the submitted proposals, it was truly an honor to learn more about these organizations and the work they are planning and doing to impact our community. We hope to refer the proposers that are not funded through our process to other available federal and state sources.
A link to the proposal catalog, guidance on Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act requests, and other information is included in this communication to help you with the proposal review process.
If you have a question on a specific proposal, please send an e-mail to KentCountyAdministrator@kentcountymi.gov. A staff member will forward your question to our Guidehouse consultants to address.
Due to the number of funding requests received, we are still refining the Board's review and determination process. We want to be open and transparent with the public while making the process streamlined for the Board. We will be back in touch with the next steps of the process.
Have a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend.
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Funding Proposals
All the proposals are listed in a digital catalog and organized by theme (affordable housing, arts and culture, broadband, etc.). Due to the size of the catalog, printed copies are not available.
Here are a few items to consider as you review the proposals:
- The submitted funding requests far exceed our ARPA allocation.
- The number assigned to each proposal is for our internal tracking purposes.
- A proposal could have multiple pages; however, the brief description box provides a synopsis of the proposal.
- Each proposal was reviewed by our Guidehouse consultants and provided a ranking based on eligibility, sustainability, and feasibility. The first page of the catalog provides a definition of these categories.
- The impact ranking reflects how many people will benefit from the project and based on information provided by the submitter.
- All proposal comments were provided by our Guidehouse consultants and based on U.S. Treasury guidelines.
- A “yellow” ranking in eligibility, sustainability, or feasibility means the project adheres to U.S. Treasury requirements but there are gaps in information or risks associated with the proposal. Additional information will be required if a proposal is selected to move forward in the process.
- Additional information is needed for several projects on whether they are in one of Kent County’s 27 qualified census tracts (QCT). County staff will continue to obtain street level data for these projects but attached is a QCT map.
- County staff continue to reach out to organizations that submitted proposals to request additional information. To date, 57 proposals have submitted additional documentation. Commissioners will be notified when a set of proposals have been updated.
- All internal County department/office proposals are listed under the “Internal County Projects” theme.
- My team reviewed all the requests submitted by our internal departments and offices and determined which proposals would have the greatest impact to County services and operations.
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Password: Kentboc (case sensitive)
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Ineligible Proposals – Submit Comments by Sept. 23
Guidehouse ranked approximately 56 proposals as not eligible per U.S. Treasury guidelines. If you have any questions about any of these proposals, please send an e-mail to KentCountyAdministrator@kentcountymi.gov by September 23. Our Guidehouse consultants will respond to your questions by September 29.
Staff will begin to send letters for proposals that are ineligible indicating that the County will not award funds for the proposal, general information about the ineligible designation, and potential alternative funding sources (if applicable) the week of October 3.
Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information
Several questions have been raised regarding the Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information requests related to our review and decision making process. Click here to review a memo from Corporate Counsel which provides additional guidance on these concerns.
Community Engagement Dashboard
During the community engagement process, we asked residents to rank the five funding groups – community health, quality of life, infrastructure, economic innovations and workforce development, and improving government operations – and to share ideas on how the funding should be spent.
The results have been compiled and placed in a Community Engagement Dashboard located on https://kentcountyarpa.com/. The dashboard includes the community’s ranking of priorities, response rates, and emerging themes from community ideas; a detailed analysis of respondent’s funding group ranking; and an archive of submitted ideas.
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Proposals Added to the Website
The digital catalog of proposals will be placed on https://kentcountyarpa.com/ the week of September 12. We wanted the Board to have an opportunity to review the proposals before making them publicly available as we continue to receive information.
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