By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph City Council is working diligently in their efforts to allocate the city's American Rescue Plan funding.
St. Joseph is set to receive a total of $39 million from the federal COVID relief bill that passed Congress in early 2021. They received the first half of that funding, roughly $19.5 million, back in May.
City manager Bryan Carter says there's about $13 million available that still needs to be allocated, but about half of the applicants who applied for this funding has received their amount. The other half of those applicants will get their money soon, pending city council approval.
"There's going to be a large allocation that will assist with the Bartlett Center," Carter said on KFEQ's The Hotline, "as well as MidCity Excellence. There's also some funding for The Joseph Company for their efforts around community culture. Just a handful of different items out there."
One key recipient of American Rescue Plan funding is the Mosaic Life Care Child Discovery Center - basically a children's museum that would go into St. Joseph's downtown.
"That could be a great improvement for the youth in our community," Carter said. "But, also an attraction for northwest Missouri for folks to come in.
"From what I understand, the concept (of the Discovery Center) is to get children engaged. Really get their minds churning and help with that educational component and engagement."
The St. Joseph City Council will hold a work session on February 3rd to further discuss American Rescue Plan funding. After that work session, the city will sign contracts with ARP recipients, and will receive the next batch of ARP funds, another $19.5 million, in a couple of weeks.
Another 8-9 ARP recipients within the city were recently approved in December. Any business, entity or household that was negatively impacted by COVID-19 was eligible to apply for this funding.
A citizen's committee was formed last year and tasked with looking at ARP funding applicants and making official recommendations to the city council, consulting community surveys, the Imagine St. Joseph 2040 plan and the city's strategic plan for guidance.
All of St. Joseph's ARP funds have to be allocated by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026. Carter says this money is important to deal with not only the immediate impact and fallout from COVID, but also the lingering impact nearly two years after the pandemic began.
"We also have a continuing effect throughout the community," Carter said. "So, we don't only put the band-aid on the immediate need, but we also take care of long-term needs as well."
Carter says they also want to be sure that those receive ARP funding have adequate time to spend the money in the way they need to.
"Projects that are going to be happening are pretty significant and major projects," he said. "They take a lot of planning. So, we did want to be sure that we didn't force any of the (ARP) funding recipients to an accelerated timeline unnecessarily."
Some of the long-term needs and impacts of COVID are now being seen nationwide in the form of inflation and labor shortages. St. Joseph certainly isn't immune to this, as numerous entities have dealt with supply chain shortages and the cost of material going up as well.
"Prices have increased significantly," Carter said. "The prices of goods and materials have increased. But, you've also been seeing the help wanted signs in quite a few places with the labor shortage that's happening right now."
The labor shortages are being felt the most in St. Joseph and Buchanan County's law enforcement offices, correctional facilities, the St. Joseph street department, fire department and even MoDOT Northwest has had trouble adequately staffing their snow removal crews.
As health experts, doctors, nurses and frontline workers continue to battle COVID today, Carter says staffing shortages have also been felt locally in the healthcare field.
"Our (St. Joseph) Health Department has a handful of nursing positions (open)," Carter said. "We're having a difficult time filling a couple of those, which of course going through a couple years of a pandemic is a stressor for sure."
You can follow Tommy on Twitter @TommyKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.