Municipalities spend ARPA funds on variety of projects

Northwest Indiana’s municipalities received a bounty of millions of dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

From stormwater projects to boosting social services, upping essential employee pay with bonuses and tackling long-awaited infrastructure projects, elected officials are putting the money to work throughout the region.

The funds, under federal strictures for the spending, must be appropriated by Dec. 31, 2024 and spent two years later.

There was speculation that municipalities’ unused ARPA funds would be recalled as part of the debt ceiling negotiation, but that ended up not happening, U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Highland, said Tuesday.

Other federal agencies saw their funds clawed back instead.

“Moneys that were given to the IRS and Homeland Security were recovered, and that $80 billion was put back into the budget,” Mrvan said.

Here’s a look at how some communities are using the funds:

For the city of Hobart, getting some much needed housekeeping completed was the order of the day with the $6.3 million it received in ARPA funds. A portion of the take — around $1 million — first went to pay the city’s essential employees premium pandemic pay, Clerk-Treasurer Deb Longer said, and then City Hall got a bit of a face-lift with an ADA-compliant front door and an emergency exit for Council Chambers.

Longer’s office got a little bit of the money, too, when the city had the pandemic plexiglass it put up at the office’s counter replaced with regular glass, she said.

Hobart-based charities Exceptional Equestrians, Hobart Humane Society and Hobart Food Pantry received portions of $40,000 the council set aside for charitable giving, Longer said, and miscellaneous public-safety equipment, such as portable defibrillators for some Hobart Police cars, is on order.

All in all, the city has spent about $2 million of its money, but the rest is earmarked for bigger projects both started and anticipated.

“The Festival Park bathrooms were something we immediately chose because we needed them,” she said. “We’ve got about $2 million set aside for the sewer project on Colorado Street when that starts, and there will be other money for the new Destination Park by the Hobart Pool.”

The town of Merrillville has spent $4.1 million of the $7.8 million it received in the funds, Town Council President Rick Bella, D-5, said. The council has used its money “to respond to the public health emergency with respect to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) or its negative economic impacts, including assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits, or aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel, and hospitality,” reads its resolution.

Among the items its paid for were additional sanitation equipment and supplies for town buildings, building sanitation/maintenance personnel and a front door greeter/security person for town hall; a generator for town hall and upgrades to its conference room, council chambers, HVAC in town buildings, and bathroom fixtures in town buildings; the town’s household improvement plan, of which residents have applied for only $100,000 of the $300,000 allotted; a small business financial assistance program; a vaccination incentive program; and a donation to the 2022 ReBuilding South Lake County.

“This (resolution) is before the treasury announced the town’s entire allotment could be classified as revenue replacement,” Bella said. “Thereafter, the town’s spending on the ARP grant moneys has stayed in line with the initial planning.”

The town of Highland, meanwhile, won’t get to spend its $5.1 million on any wants, Clerk-Treasurer Mark Herak said, but it will help knock out a giant need: a sewer project that’s part of the consent decree with the city of Hammond. Right now, the money’s sitting tight in an interest-bearing account, he said.

Hammond’s ARPA funding was used 100% for infrastructure projects, while some communities tapped the revenue replacement component of the funding, allowing them to fill pandemic-related budget shortfalls, Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., said.

“Getting that $52 million allowed us to do projects that were badly needed,” McDermott said.

McDermott said he and the city council were on the same page and decided early the funding would be used exclusively for infrastructure. Thanks to that cooperation the city was among the first in the state to appropriate funds and get work underway. Many of the projects already are completed.

“All districts were touched by the money. I’m proud of us for doing that. It resulted in great projects and a lot of extra work for our trades,” he said.

Hammond spent $4 million for Robertsdale lead remediation; $3 million for new infrastructure at Clark High School for 37 new single family homes; $5 million for the downtown Hohman Avenue reconstruction; $5 million for the new YMCA; $3.5 million for the new Calumet Avenue pedestrian bridge between Munster and Hammond; $1 million for reconstruction of Oxbow Road, $3.6 million for a new Hessville bridge over the rail crossing; $5 million for the Kennedy Avenue reconstruction in downtown Hessville; $1.3 million for software updates and cybersecurity; and $1 million toward Columbia Avenue water tank repairs.

Another approximately $2 million was spent between projects including reconstruction of JF Mahoney Drive, a new storm sewer in the 7000 block of Schneider Street, a new single-family home development on Florida Avenue in Hessville and technology updates for the Hammond City council.

The city received an additional $2 million in ARPA funding from the Lake County Council when Councilman Dave Hamm, D-Hammond, and Councilwoman Christine Cid, D-East Chicago, kicked in $1 million each toward the construction of Firehouse No. 2 in the Robertsdale neighborhood. Council members earmarked their dollars for infrastructure projects within the communities in their districts.

Their contributions were part of $10 million in ARPA revenue replacement funds distributed to the council from the Lake County Board of Commissioners. Since money was part of the revenue replacement program, council members were able to use the funds for a wider variety of projects, Commissioner Michael Repay, D-Hammond, said.

Lake County received approximately $94 million in ARPA funding to be distributed by commissioners. The bulk of the funding, outside of the $10 million directed to the county council, was used for two separate septic elimination projects in the unincorporated north and south parts of the county.

About $33 million will be directed to the project that will join residents in south Lake County to the Crown Point sewer system. More than $40 million was given toward the Calumet Township septic elimination project, a previously unfunded infrastructure project. Repay said the need for the Calumet Township project was identified in 2018 but the then-$60 million price tag was cost-prohibitive.

“It sat there a long time until ARPA came out,” Repay said. Today the project is expected to cost $120 million. “Basically we’ll just get a third of the project done.”

Porter County officials, for both the county and cities and towns, have appropriated nearly all their ARPA grant money. Valparaiso Clerk-Treasurer Holly Taylor said the city received nearly $7.7 million and “have not heard a peep” about giving any of it back.

Almost all the city’s ARPA money was appropriated in 2023, with a small supplemental amount of $14,483.93 left to be appropriated. The city used nearly $600,000 to respond to COVID and its negative economic impacts; nearly $700,000 for premium pay to eligible workers; $6.4 million for the provision of government services due to revenue reduction; and $40,000 for audit costs and consultants.

The town of Chesterton is using its $3.2 million for a new police station, according to Clerk-Treasurer Courtney Udvare.

At the county level, $5 million hangs in the balance as the Porter County Board of Commissioners and the Porter County Council limp toward an agreement of how to spend that portion of its $33 million in ARPA funds. At the end of 2022 the $5 million was appropriated for extensive renovations and expansion of the Memorial Opera House in downtown Valparaiso, but later unappropriated by the council after the Board of Commissioners failed to move ahead with the project due to an extensive gap between funding and the estimated final price tag.

By the end of 2022, the county had appropriated $18.6 million for a variety of county concerns, including $1.6 million to shore up the county health insurance fund, $500,000 for township assistance, $25,000 for a behavioral health study, $1 million for premium pay to county workers, and $2.5 million for construction of the Marquette Trail. A variety of nonprofits received $7.9 million.

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Michelle L. Quinn and Shelley Jones are freelance reporters for the Post-Tribune.