 sure we're going to have additional folks joining us. I'm going to go ahead and start the recording in progress. Here we go. So for folks who join late, again, my name is Sarah Rait. I work as a regional planner for two rivers out of Pitchy Regional Commission. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm the designated ARPA liaison for our office. So we have some funding from the state to assist towns in understanding ARPA regulations and navigating the logistics of actually using the money and to assist with community engagement as needed. So thank you so much for coming out tonight. I know it's a busy time of year and if folks think this is valuable, we can try to do another one later on. But we are going to record this session for folks who aren't able to attend just a sort of a brief overview of how we're hoping tonight's going to go. I'm going to give a brief presentation that gives you a bird's eye view of the ARPA regulations as we currently understand them. And then we'll do some questions and answers. If you have specific issues about the regulations that you want to talk through, I'll do my best to answer those questions. And if I can't answer them tonight, I will research them, talk with the LCT experts and get you an answer as soon as we can. Oh, great. Here's this joining. It's fantastic. And so once we've sort of gone through questions and issues that you might want to talk through on the actual regulations themselves, I'd like to open it up to just a general discussion for folks to share what the current discussion on ARPA is in your town, whether they're specific projects you're thinking of tackling using ARPA money, what your process has been for selecting projects, what your process has been for like evaluating and prioritizing projects that you're going to fund under this, whether you're looking at additional funding sources to either match your ARPA dollars or even to sort of take the place of using ARPA money. We'll talk a little bit about that in the presentation. So I'm going to go ahead and dive in and I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to ask you all to confirm you can actually see the slides. Can everybody see that? Yes. Yes. Oh, wonderful. Okay. All right. So again, for folks who joined late, my name's Sarri. I work for two of us at the Cochin Regional Commission. Let's just talk to you briefly the timeline that Treasury has given us for ARPA. As many of you probably already know, ARPA payments are coming to local towns and villages in two equal tranches. The first came in August and September of 2021. And then the second half of the money is going to be coming in August and September of this year. If you need to look up the total allocation for your town or village, you can find a link to a spreadsheet that's embedded on VLCT's ARPA webpage. Some more thoughts about timing here. ARPA dollars can be used to cover expenses that have been incurred since March 3rd of 2021. And they have to be, all of the funds have to be obligated by the end of calendar year 2024. So obligated means that you've placed an order or property or services or you've entered into a contract, subaward, some kind of formal written transaction that requires payments. So that all has to be in line by the end of calendar year 2024. All of your funds have to be expended by the end of calendar year 2026. And if you are not able to spend the money down by the end of 2026, you have to return it to Treasury. VLCT has recommended to towns and villages that they delay spending their ARPA dollars until after March 31st of 2022, which is the end of the first reporting period. The first project and expenditure reports that you're going to have to file, and those are annual reports that you have to do for Treasury, are going to be due April 30th of this year. The first report that you're going to file covers the period from March 3rd, 2021 through March 31st, 2022, this year. And an email from Treasury went out in mid-December to the person in your municipality who was designated as the authorized representative back when you first certified to accept your award. Your designated secondary contact should have also gotten a copy of that email. If the people in those roles are going to change following local elections this year, please make sure that you update the contact information in the reporting portal as soon as you can. Treasury has prepared a user guide to the portal, which is linked in that email that came from Treasury. And you'll also find the links on VLCT's website. And that user guide really walks you through step by step how to navigate through the portal. It doesn't really talk about the content of reporting so much. That's sort of talked about in the compliance and reporting guide, which unfortunately is still in an old format. The version that exists from Treasury right now in that particular guide is really written in response to the interim regulations that are now defunct as of January 6th when Treasury issued its final rule. So we're hoping that Treasury is going to get us a revised compliance and reporting guidance document as soon as they can, along with hopefully an updated FAQ document as well. But for the time being, the user guide that we have for the portal is in its final version. And we really do recommend that you go ahead and start reviewing those instructional resources now. And you'll even find some webinar links on VLCT's website if you want to go through some video like walkthroughs of how to go through the portal. There are a number of steps that you have to take before you can actually start preparing your report itself. You've got to register with login.gov and you've got to confirm your user accounts and designate reporting rules. There's all these sort of hurdles that you have to get up and over before you actually can start working on the report. So strongly recommend that you don't save that to the last minute. Get yourself all ready to go and primed so that you can hit the ground running come April. Let's talk through what Treasury says we are permitted So let's go ahead and talk through what Treasury says we are permitted to spend local arba dollars on. And as we were discussing just at the beginning of this conversation before we started recording the January 6th issuance of the final rule by Treasury really did change the game for the vast majority of Vermont municipalities. And the major change that happened was really focused on that revenue replacement category. Basically revenue replacement if you're going to dedicate dollars and categorize them as revenue replacement you can use those dollars for the provision of any service that's traditionally provided by a government. And based on the information that we have right now from VLCT from Treasury that can be interpreted very broadly. So it's not limited to the services that your government has provided that your specific local town government or village government has provided up to this point. It's any service that might be provided by a state county local government around the country. So that really gives you quite broad latitude to do a lot of interesting projects under that revenue replacement category. And the really significant change that happened on January 6th is that Treasury has given a standard allocation of 10 million dollars that any community can claim regardless of the size of the community, regardless of the location of the community, as revenue that was supposedly lost as a result of COVID. So you can claim up to 10 million dollars of your award and dedicate it as revenue replacement claiming that that was lost revenue due to COVID. And you don't have to do any back-up calculations. If you remember in the interim regulation there were rather complex formulas for actually calculating out what your community lost as a result of COVID. That's all been set aside. It's gone by the wayside. You can claim that standard allowance of up to 10 million dollars. And so obviously every community in our region has received an award that's under 10 million dollars. That means that you can dedicate up to the entirety of your award should you so choose as revenue replacement, which obviously gives you a great deal more flexibility. And the LCT really is encouraging towns that got relatively small awards to go that route, to go the revenue replacement route, not only because of the flexibility of spending uses that it gives you, but also because the reporting requirements under that category are going to be far more streamlined than they are under the other eligible use categories under ARPA. So for a variety of reasons, revenue replacement looks like it's the way to go. There are however, still a number of open questions about how exactly it's going to work. Allocating dollars under revenue replacement. BLCT is evaluating right now whether there are any accounting or legal pitfalls that might exist that you need to watch out for when you're categorizing your dollars as lost revenue. For example, I know some communities are concerned about triggering a single audit and that may well be the case if you're also bringing in other federal dollars from other sources. So when exactly if you're counting dollars as revenue replacement and putting it into your general fund, for example, when exactly are those considered expended is for the audit purposes. BLCT is grappling with that. We're also trying to grapple with this question of if you're going to transfer money to another entity within the revenue replacement category, are you still abiding by the regulations around transfers that exist elsewhere in the ARPA regulations? And what are the logistics of that exactly? And then also questions around admin costs. So if you're going to be paying your staff, your town staff or village staff to actually administer these funds and do these projects, can you do that under revenue replacement or do you have to do that under the separate admin category that had been created under the interim rule? So there's still all these logistical questions that are flying. BLCT is busy, hard at work talking to lawyers and municipal finance experts about this, and we're hoping we're going to get some more guidance from them and from Treasury in the coming months. So again, the message is hold on if you can and try to hold off on spending any money until after the end of March so that you're able to hopefully get a little bit more guidance under your feet. But let's talk through the other sort of few... I've got a quick question. I'm sorry if I should just jump in here or not, but will we have access to this presentation? Sure. So this presentation is being recorded and it's going to be posted on our YouTube channel. And I'm also happy to provide the slides to anybody who's interested. So if you want to go ahead and draw... That will save me from taking a lot of notes. Absolutely. Absolutely. There should be a chat function enabled in this presentation. So if you want to just drop your email in there for me and I'll grab it later and I'll make sure that you get a copy of the slides. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. So let's talk through the other sort of few categories, the umbrella categories that exist of eligible uses under ARPA. The second of these is pandemic response. So that's responding to public health and negative economic impacts as a result of the pandemic. A big focus of that is direct assistance to households, businesses, nonprofits. Again, this particular category has a lot of criteria that you have to meet around who exactly is eligible to receive assistance, what kind of projects are eligible, what constitutes an impact to business or a disproportionately impacted business. And then there's a great deal of reporting that has to happen around that too, demographic reporting in particular. So these kinds of projects, even direct assistance to private entities, could happen under revenue replacement, right? And you wouldn't have that reporting burden and you wouldn't necessarily have that many restrictions on who exactly could receive assistance. We're still trying to confirm that with VLCT, make sure that that's all above board and figure out the logistics of that. But again, that's another reason why VLCT is saying be wary of going under these other eligibility categories because they really do limit you in comparison to the revenue replacement category. The third category here is premium pay to essential workers. Again, very strict limits on who constitutes an essential worker and how much you can pay them above and beyond their regular salary. Fourth category here is water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. There's been a lot to talk about that in the media. Again, when it's on the kinds of projects that are eligible, typically the water and sewer, they have to fall under the clean water SRF eligibility guidelines or the drinking water SRF eligibility guidelines, which are quite complex. They're a whole world in and of themselves. And then some additional categories were added like stormwater projects, including up sizing of culverts, which I know is a big issue for a lot of our communities. So that is considered an eligible use under that particular category. But again, the reporting requirements for that fourth category there are more extensive than what we face under revenue replacement. And those are the kinds of projects that you could certainly just put under revenue replacement. So that's sort of a broad overview of what Treasury says we can do. Let's talk about the don'ts. First of all, Treasury tells us that ARPA funds cannot be used to make extraordinary contributions to pension funds. So that means anything above and beyond what you would normally be paying to an employee, a town employee as part of their regular paycheck. You can't use ARPA funds to keep in reserve. You can't use it to replenish your rainy day fund or create some sort of COVID emergency fund that it will use when you need it. You really need to spend on a project. Have a timeline. Make sure you've obligated that money by end of calendar year 2024. We can't use ARPA money to service debt, and that's true regardless of when that debt was incurred. So do be aware of that restriction. It means that you're going to have to think about when you're using ARPA money, it's used as a down payment rather than sort of engaging a loan service through your ARPA money. Also, Treasury has told us that ARPA dollars cannot be used for projects that undermine the CDC's guidance with regard to the pandemic. So the kinds of examples that have been bandied about really by Treasury up to this point are you can't build, for example, a jail that would be basically a large congregate facility where you're bringing a lot of people together and increasing the risk of the spread of COVID, or you can't provide, for example, an assistance program using your ARPA money and then deny access to that assistance to a business that is enforcing a mask mandate within its premises. Some sort of policy that's in line with CDC guidance, so you don't want to punish anybody for complying with CDC guidance. And then finally, ARPA dollars have to be used in compliance with the terms and conditions of your awards, and make sure you're aware of those, and then also any federal, state, or local laws. A few other thoughts that I just want to pull out here. Now is a really great time while we're waiting for additional guidance from VLCT and from Treasury itself to be reaching out to your communities to have those discussions about gathering input on what would be a good project, what would be a good use of funds, to how are we going to prioritize the ideas that are coming in. If you are interested in assistance in sort of structuring that dialogue or structuring that outreach, or you want help actually facilitating a public meeting, I'm available to help with that. We have some state funding to help towns and villages work through those conversations, so please reach out to me and I'm going to be putting my contact information in the chat shortly here. And then the other thing to keep in mind is that there may be other funding sources out there that might be able to pay for part or all of the projects that you're currently thinking, oh I might want to spend some $1 on that. I'm going to be dropping a series of links into the chat, and I'm actually going to, in the show here you should still be able to see the slide, but I'm going to be dropping a series of links into the chat that outline a number of additional funding opportunities. I should be able to access those now. And those particular opportunities are, most of them are linked on VLCT's website. They are tremendously helpful resources for navigating the plethora of grant programs and load programs that are out there that communities can access. One of the items, one of the funding opportunities that's sort of on the horizon that is not included in that list of links that I just posted in the chat, is H518, which is currently in the House Appropriations Committee. That bill, if passed and approved, would provide funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in municipal buildings. And I know that that's conversations that many of our towns have been having with our office and have been thinking, oh well maybe we're going to use ARPA dollars for that. We just want to make everybody aware that that is potentially another funding source that's on the horizon, which might allow you to save your ARPA dollars for another project that you want to work on. And we're told by VLCT that that bill does have very good traction in the ledge right now. Also, another thing to keep in mind is that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is coming down a pike. And so that's going to be providing significant funding for a wide variety of transportation, water infrastructure, brownfields, climate resilience, and broadband projects. So that's something to keep in mind as well. We don't, that money hasn't landed yet and it's all going to be funneled through the state and they're going to be creating grant programs. So we don't know what that's going to look like, but it is on the horizon. I'm going to go ahead, we're going to stop this presentation so that we can see each other. And I'm also going to drop my contact information into the chat for folks who want to talk offline, especially about community engagement or anything, any questions that come up for you. But I wanted to open the floor for any questions that you might have about the final rule and the logistics of using your ARPA money. I just have a question. Did you say there may be money coming from the state for energy efficiency upgrades of municipal buildings? Is that what you just said? Yeah. And what's that called? H518 is the number of the bill right now. Yeah, it's in house appropriations committee. Well, that was money we could use without leveraging ARPA money, just as a separate thing to help meet the energy standards the state wants. Or is this something we would have to use leverage ARPA money for? So my understanding is that's an entirely separate part of money. I don't know if they would require a match, in which case you might need to use some of your ARPA money or other funds to do that. Okay, thank you. Absolutely. Other questions? About the regulations? Is there a link there to being able to register and all that kind of that you had mentioned before? To register for which part? For the portal? Yes. Yes, for the portal. So that link should be in the information that Treasury sent to your designated representative for reporting. So whoever was on that list, they should have received an email that has all of the access information for the portal. Okay, thank you. Unfortunately, they don't provide that to third parties. So we're sort of flying blind when it comes to that stuff. So what I had talked to our auditors about this solvent and powers and they had so basically what you're saying is it's like the feds must have given out a $10 million loophole for small because they don't want to get all this reporting. So you're saying we can accept this money as a quote and go revenue replacement even though we didn't lose that much revenue and then without any reporting requirements and then we can spend it as under anything that's approved by through the ARPA money. Right, so you still have to broadly follow the ARPA guidelines. You can't do any of the expenditures on that no list, right? The prohibitive. And you have to be able to justify it as a government service, which is fairly broad and easy to do because it's not just limited to your town in terms of the realm of possibilities. But in terms of reporting, my understanding, and I've watched the Treasury's webinars on what reporting for lost revenue would look like and it's really quite simple. It's saying, you know, are you claiming any of your dollars as lost revenue? Please enter the amount that you are claiming as lost revenue and then it has just a blank text box and it says provide a narrative for, let me see if I can get the actual wording for you, provide a narrative of the government services that you're funding effectively. So Bethel has water sewer. So our plan, kind of the one we've talked about just on the board is to take this money and use to replace sewer pumps. I've got an estimate of like 110,000 to replace sewer pumps. And I have a huge generator that needs to be replaced. The roof on this, like to do some infrastructure work within sewer water, but the town, I mean, there's still, it's still a service the town provides sewer water even. I mean, it's all under one umbrella. That's not its own separate entity. But the piece I'm curious about is the community engagement piece. Is this, we just have to talk about it at select board meetings? Do I have to do a mailer? Is there hoops that we have to jump through to adhere to the rules of community engagement? I keep hearing about community engagement and I'm sure Betty can tell you not, you know, there's not a million people attending our select board meetings. So I'm curious what that has to look like to adhere to the ARPA rules. So ARPA is maddeningly unspecific, right, when it comes to community engagement. It's sort of referred to as a best practice. So really, I think the bare minimum that you should do is you should have public meeting at which this is discussed and you do welcome public comment on it, right? The sort of next steps above that would be to have the public hearing, to have an actual community forum where you're talking through ideas, that sort of stuff. And as you sort of step up that ladder, it does get logistically more complicated and two rivers is available to help with that. You want to go that route. And I know that a few communities in our region have already had those meetings and they've asked me to join them and sort of facilitate community input around this stuff. And then they're sort of taking all the ideas that were gathered and they're winnowing them down, right? Often in a committee format. So there's so many different ways that you could approach it. I think, you know, making sure that there's some level of community opportunity to provide input is really the bare minimum. And beyond that, Treasury is not going to get specific as to how exactly that looks. Okay. So if we, all right, that makes sense. I mean, we have, we're going Australian ballot. We have our Monday night as our final, you know, public slash budget informational for them, for the boat. So I'll make sure that we bring it up there and let people know what we're thinking. And I think it's also difficult in a way because a lot of the businesses received money directly through the COVID relief. And it's also difficult. We don't, you know, we don't have a ton of staff to figure out to sort it out who, who's going to get this money or who's needy in your community or who can, you know, for pandemic relief. So for us, our feeling is, Hey, we'll put it in the infrastructure because that helps everybody. If we can bring the water, we can pay for sewer and water expenses. It saves us from saving their, you know, raising rates. Now, we don't have townwide sewer and water in Bethel, but it's also, we feel that sewer and water is also an attraction to our town, right? Because the main street has sewer water. So what benefits, you know, them necessarily, you know, maybe benefits everybody. So I was just curious, I was frankly just more concerned about the community engagement piece because, you know, as Betty and other people know, it's difficult sometimes to get, you know, when people are angry, you hear all about it, but when they're not, it's hard to get an opinion all the time about input into these projects. So yeah, all right. Well, that's, that's good, but thank you. Absolutely. And I did want to follow up on the question. So I was mentioning that when you go into your report, your reporting portal and you're trying to report on revenue replacement expenditure, the, the sort of prompt for your narrative description of what you've done is please provide an explanation of how revenue replacement funds were allocated to government services. As simple as that. Right. So, you know, we might get more specifics coming down the pike. Hopefully if Treasury gets us some updated guidance, but at the moment, you can see how much easier it is to, to report on that project versus, you know, a water project under the other, other eligibility category where they're asking for state permit numbers and like proof that you're eligible under CWSRF. It gets, it gets very complicated, very. Okay. That makes sense. Can it be handled at, at town meeting? Certainly. You can, you can do this at town meeting. You can do it in whatever form you please. Okay. Just as long as we let the public know that there's money. Also, when I talked to the Katie at the League of Cities and Towns, she even had a, had suggestions on how to tell people that you've not accepted their project. Right. So, yes, that's difficult. That's the problem is that you as certainly on the, on the select board are probably more aware than many people of what the real needs are in the town, especially when it comes to roads and we're hoping to, to put a shed up to keep our equipment that's having it sit out in the snow in the town garage. And so just those kinds of things, we'd like them to know that that's where the money's going, but you don't want to run into a lot of, well, we don't need a, they don't need a shed. They can sit out in the yard, you know, they can't go in at one o'clock in the morning. They can't start the equipment because it's cold. So anyway, that's just, you can see that maybe presenting a slight calling for, for, from the floor ideas might, might help as long as we get it out there. That's the one. Okay. And if you've had prior discussions around capital budgeting, or in your town planning, you've already identified projects that are in need of funding, that presumably went through a public process, right? So you, you have something to stand on when you're putting this forward. Yeah, we, we already did it because we talked about a town meeting last year. So, okay, good. That's absolutely, that's great. So is ARPA money itself exempt from a single audit? No, no. So if you are, if you, when you tally up all the federal dollars that you guys, if you pass that $750,000 threshold, you will need to run a single audit. And any sort of sub recipients that you have under ARPA are also going to be subject to those requirements. So it can get complicated. We just aren't entirely certain yet with the revenue replacement categories specifically, when, if you, if you're going to be sort of putting it into your general fund, is that when it's considered expended for the purpose of the single audit tally? Or like, does it actually have to leave your account? That's, that's what we're trying to figure out right now. Yeah, we're having a single audit done now. It certainly is in the fiscal year in which you expend it is when, you know, accounts, but, but you could also use that. I mean, because a single audit is not cheap, you know, eight, seven to 10 grand, at least, you know, is what we're looking at. But you can also, if we accept this as revenue replacement, then we could use some of the ARPA money and it's in a roundabout way to pay for the single audit. Absolutely. Of course, it depends if you have other projects, right? Because whether or not, you know, hopefully you're not hitting the $750,000. I mean, we only did hit it because we had a $2.8 million water project. Otherwise, we wouldn't have hit $750,000 in expenditures. But so that's, yeah, I thought the community engagement piece was going to be a lot more daunting than that. So I'm happy to hear that it's not. Just one more point when we're talking about individuals who need help. When I talked again, when I talked with the League of Citizens Towns, the state of Vermont has $55 million right now to help single family low income, to pay for mortgages, to pay for their utilities and so forth. And each family can get up to $30,000. So that made us not think that we needed to see in our community so much as to get the word to them. For instance, people who haven't been able to pay their taxes, that's right there that they need. And if they haven't paid their taxes, they can get help to pay their taxes. So I know that's a little off point, but it does relate back to ARPA. Absolutely. That's a really excellent point. Thank you, Betty. I know that a lot of towns have really grappled with that question. They struggle with that question of wanting to divide individual assistance. And does the town staff have the capacity, I think is the key question, to actually administer that kind of a program? And do you have a sense of what the eligibility criteria are going to be and how are you going to decide that? And that can be really daunting for a town that just doesn't have a lot of town staff for a lot of time to work on that. And there are so many other programs out there that you could refer folks to for assistance. And there's going to be even more coming down the pike, right? Because there's going to be stuff that's funded through the states, right? So the state got its own ARPA allocation. So they are operating under the same rules as everybody else, but obviously they had more than $10 million in award. And so they've got all these different programs that are largely breaking out along those other categories that we've talked about. And some of those are specifically focused on assisting low-income households with, for example, leatherization, broadband access, that sort of thing. And so there's those kinds of programs. And then there's additional assistance outside of the sort of COVID relief kind of world that exists as well. So that's certainly something to keep in mind. Is there a list of all those funding sources on like VLCT's website for, you know, we kind of get a piecemeal, but certainly we always try to distribute that information to residents. Is there a list of those programs that we could be, you know, maybe doing a better job getting to residents on VLCT's website or? I haven't looked on the website, so I'm not sure. But 80, I can't remember her last name, Blake Blakey. Buckley, yep. She would be happy to send you a whole list of websites. Perfect, thank you. And I've just repasted in the chat because I know we just had somebody join us. The links that are on, well some of them are on VLCT's website and then there's some additional stuff as well. And I would really draw your attention to the housing assistance resources there, which is really a very easy to use, like where to refer folks if they need help with mortgage payments, with leatherization, like just every aspect of housing that you can imagine. It's got where do I go if I need this and send you to the right resource. So that's tremendously useful and I would definitely encourage folks to work with that. I'm not familiar with this program. How can I copy that? Okay, yes. So are you able to access the chat? There's a little speech bubble. I put my email address on it, so is there any way to just copy it off of the chat site? I'm not sure if you can copy it off of that, but can you click on the link in the chat itself and it should open up the window and then you should be able to see it later. Right. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, I had that same problem and I just had to copy each individual link and then copy the link from the website that it brought me to. Okay. But I did use the snipping tool to snip the whole window from the chat, which is a reference, but then the links aren't live so you can't click on them, but I was trying to figure that out. I guess that's a fault of Zoom is you can't actually copy and paste that box. Yeah, that's a problem. I'm sorry to hear that. As I had mentioned earlier, if anybody would like me to follow up with copies of the slides and I'll also include a link, that list of links that I've been posting in the chat, just drop your email address into the chat for me and I'll follow up with you afterwards. Okay, so you'll have that in a different spot as well. Other questions about the final rule or anything else relating to ARPA? When do you think you'll get that village to the updated guidance? We really don't know. Unfortunately, Treasury's kind of been a black box around this stuff. We're really hoping that it'll come before the first reporting deadline, right, of April 30th, but we just don't know at this point. I know VLCT has been working hard on their end and it sounds like we might have in the next few weeks or so some more information from them around best practices, but again, it's all sort of out of our hands at this point. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so it sounds like maybe no more questions for the moment. We've talked a little bit about some projects that you all are considering and some process around deciding on those projects. Do you have any questions or concerns about your process in terms of identifying projects? How are you going to decide on them? How are you going to share them with the public? And I think that this is by need, right? I mean, I think let's face it, we all got a nice chunk of change, but we probably all have way more need than what we got. It's going to be a matter of we could use five million. I'm sure Brookfield and other towns could use it. Now, then you really got something. And so for us, it's a matter of what can we fully take care of or leverage the money to use? I mean, obviously, we talked about it not using touching broadband because the governor had set aside so much money for broadband and what can we do as a small community? For us, it was what can we take care of now that's not going to impact the tax rate as much down the road? So it's a rotating list of need, right? Absolutely. Yes, we had the same thing. You know, after we did all our projects, we had more projects than money, even though it seemed a lot for a small town. Yeah, especially infrastructure projects are just so expensive. What other, I know Bethel is shared, Water and Sewer and Brookfield, you mentioned a shed. What other kinds of projects are you thinking about right now? What's on your short list? Yes, we're going to put in a well to add two wells, actually one at the town clerk's office and one at the town garage. When we had a drought a couple of years ago, both wells went dry. Recently, they turned on the water at the town clerk's office and sand came out. So that's a real need right away. Yeah, I'm impressed at how much work you've already done in your towns because we just basically had our first meeting and we're just getting organized. But even at that meeting, we found out what you mentioned. Is it Teresa or Teresa? Teresa. It's Teresa. Yeah, there's already so many existing projects that it could be used for. But it wasn't a whole lot of specific projects that we talked about, but it's helping downtown businesses, improving infrastructure for walking and biking, trying to get people out of cars. I'm not even sure if those qualify yet for sure, but those are some of the ideas that we're kicking around. And we do have some Water and Sewer projects that it can certainly help with as well. But yeah, it sounds like a big chunk, but there's a lot more need than money even now, but it certainly will be a big help. So we're just interested in hearing a little bit of other people's processes, what's worked and what, again, what projects you're looking at. But again, good job being way ahead of this. But I think it'll go pretty quickly. And we did actually make a strategy to kind of sit back a little bit and wait exactly because some funds that have come in before with other grants changed once the game was in play. So so we're going to experience people on our office that said, Hey, let's kind of hang back a little bit and make sure this doesn't change before we get started and go in a certain direction. So I don't know if that will appeal to our benefit or not, but we'll see. So yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, for us, it was, you know, for because at first, the reason we started early talking about it was because when it first came out, right, it was like water sewer broadband. Well, you know, once you figured out, you couldn't maybe do and it was some other stuff. But for us, it was like, okay, if it's not broadband, it's water sewer. And then, you know, we have an aging system that hasn't been maintained. So it's, you know, we just did a $2.8 million project and they're working already designing the next, you know, phase, which is over a million itself. So it's like, okay, you know, what do you do? And, you know, it just seems like everything is just like the route, everything's getting older. So it's hard to deal with. And and at first they weren't we they were talked about when it first came out, we wouldn't weren't necessarily going to be able to do road infrastructure. And so that was tough. Then they also had said we could only when it first came out sewer water was only to build new stuff. And we're like, we don't need new stuff, we need to fix what we got. So you're right. I mean, I'm glad we I'm glad we haven't spent any money because it's changed so much since it first came out. Yeah. And we are going to see additional funds come down the pipe to through IHAA through the infrastructure investment jobs act. And Jeff, when you were talking about sort of alternative transportation projects, active transportation is going to be a big focus under IHAA. So I expect you're going to see some grant programs shaking out for that for bike and ped safe streets, that sort of stuff, parking ride. So the the infrastructure investment jobs act, that's the federal act that that just recently got passed. And it's going to be putting a pouring a whole lot of money into the state. And then the state's going to be sort of doling it out through grant programs of one flavor or another. They haven't been stood up yet, but there there will be a lot of money in there for transportation. And that includes maintaining highways and bridges, as you've probably heard from me. So those and also electric vehicle charging, that sort of stuff. So there's there's a lot of stuff that's coming through. The one thing to remember, though, is it has to be committed in two years. Right. And that sounds like a long time. But when you're working on these big projects, it's not a long time. And then you have to have spent it two more years. So right. The commitment has to be made in two years. So yeah. So for infrastructure projects, certainly it's it's important to be getting out as soon as you can in front of those. So it's it's a weird catch 22 of here hoping that other funds and there's no timeline on that. Unfortunately. Wonder if other folks on the line, Larry, Bruce, Francie, if you have any thoughts to share from your communities. No pressure, if not. Has anybody started looking at the reporting portal? Has anybody started grappling with that user guide or any of that stuff? For those who joined late, just a reminder that that first report is going to be due April 30th. And there's some sort of legwork that you have to do before you can actually get into the portal and start working on the report. You have to sort of authorize your users and register for an account and there's just some some hurdles that you need to take care of. So do try to get those done sooner rather than later. So you're not putting it off to the last minute. And there is a helpful user guide on BLCT's website. It's linked on BLCT's website along with webinars that sort of walk you through step by step going through the portal. So we encourage the folks who are the designated reporters for your community to familiarize themselves with those resources. And also for the folks who joined late, if you anticipate that the authorized representatives that you sort of designated when you certified for your board are going to be changing following local elections, make sure that you're updating that information in the portal. Any other thoughts about process questions? Happy to hang on the line. If anybody else has anything else they want to talk through and if not then you might just end early. Good luck to everyone. Yeah. You too. Thank you. No, I think that's helpful. I'm curious. I'll follow up on each 5118. Like Betty, we need a new town garage. I know I am a Brookfield resident actually even though I'm the town manager in Bethel. So I know you guys have had a struggle about that which I think you were right all along about your town garage or our town garage. But Bethel is trying to do the same thing and build a new garage. I'll be interested in some of this. We're also trying to do some energy efficiency upgrades of the town office. So I'll be interested in H5118. I'll follow up with our local rep Kirk White and see what you can find out about that. But it would be nice. So the hard part is you don't know when this money is going to pass and if it passes how long until it funnels us. You said the infrastructure investment jobs acts at the federal level passed. But I spoke to five, I was at the state garage in Royalton. There was five guys there from the state, you know, Chris Bump and Mike Blakesley and some others. And I'm like, so how are they going to funnel the money? Are you going to give more structures grants, more paving grants? Are you going to use the process that works and then just allocate more funding? And they said they didn't know how that money was going to get to us. If it's going to be new grants or funding the same process that we're all aware of. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a lag time. Have you heard anything about how the state thinks they're going to get the money to municipalities? No, I mean, I attended the webinar that happened a while back and they had representatives of each agency that was going to be receiving money sort of talking through the broad categories of uses that were eligible for that funding. But they all have the same message which is that they're still trying to figure out the structure for delivery of those funds. I wondered. I'm hoping they go through a structure that already exists that we're all familiar with because I know we applied for a big Vorek grant and they were finally putting out emails saying don't contact us and they're still trying to sort through that process because they were given money, had to spend it so quickly. And they were trying to invent this you know process to review and all these other criteria on the fly. And we still don't know how, if we made it, how we made out of that grant. So I'm hoping the state just uses what we all know. Teresa, have you been working through the state's CWSRF and DWSR funds for the projects that you've been working on? Yep. Yeah, we went through the yeah, the drinking water state review. Yeah, because what we did was that's how we did our 2.8 million dollar project. Obviously, we did a bond vote and we had money through there because you can if you have depending on your community, you know, we got different pots of money and like a 25% of the project 50% because if you have, you know, because it all depends on right on your per capita income. And then when the presidential election was going on, you know, a lot of times when presidents come in, they all push, you know, big projects, right, like when Obama we had all the era money and I did a project in another town, we had like 50% forgiveness. So we end up borrowing more money through DWSRF, through their state revolving loan fund for planning, because they give you a really good deal. You have like five years and then sometimes there's no payback or reduced forgiveness if you wrap it into a bigger finance project that you do with them in the bond bank. And so we move to full design just on the off chance that if all of a sudden they come up with money, generally they have to be shovel ready. So we pushed a full design we're like 80% of our next phase so that if they come out with it, we have the money or we can say, haha, you know, we're shovel ready and ready to go. So it's actually nice. It's I think it's a good process. I mean, you have to get on the priority list, which we just, you know, we do and but we have a good engineering firm that we use and they've been helpful. But I think the process is, you know, pretty streamlined, pretty good. I've been their state easy to deal with. So yeah, absolutely. I know they've certainly been a good resource for us and sort of navigating town questions around financing options. Yeah, one of the things I will say about using ARPA dollars as match, if you're trying to breathe funding streams together, it's just make sure that you've talked to the other funders and that it's okay to match ARPA dollars with their program. Unfortunately, there's no one size fits all rule for ARPA dollars. It really is going to vary depending upon the agency that you're working with. So just make sure that you double checked those other funders if you're going to try to use your local ARPA dollars as match. Okay, good, good point. Excellent. Thank you. And Jeff, I was just going to ask you what are you on the select board and Randolph or No, I'm on the planning committee planning committee. And also the ARPA fund committee that we just formed. I just want to make notes in case I call need to call and ask for any time. Yep. You're in Brookfield. Great. You must know Gary Durr. I don't. Where does he live? He's on the energy committee. So I thought he was just up there. Maybe you talked to select board. I'm not sure. But he's yeah, I didn't. I've only been on the board since October. But okay, I'm not sure when that was. But you'll probably meet him at some time. Yeah, I haven't met Therese either. And she's a Brookfield. She knows which town to live in. Our select board meetings are the same nights as Brookfield. So I can't attend because you meet the same nights that I'm meeting in Bethel. So we kind of laugh about that. I'm like one of these days I'll we'll have an off night and I'll be able to attend. On town. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Really quite good. Yeah, thank you. That's a lot of great resources. Appreciate that. You're very welcome. And please don't hesitate to reach out. If you have anything you want to talk through, anything comes up. If your town is in the position where you're going to be forming a committee and you want some model language, I know that the LCT is going to be coming up with like a formal sort of template document that towns can choose their own adventure kind of using. But I'm not sure when that's going to be published. We do have an example from another community in the state that is much more simplified and it's easy to use if you want that. Just give me a shout and I can send that your way. Absolutely. Yeah, please don't hesitate to give me a shout. And I will, as I promised, email you. If you put your contact information in the chat, I will email you the slides as well as the links from this evening. And we can continue the conversation. Great. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you all. Take good care. Thank you. Bye-bye. Get your shovels out.