Board approves ARP expenditure plan

American Rescue Plan projects outlined

Yolo County supervisors approved the initial American Rescue Plan expenditure plan after a presentation and deliberation lasting over two hours.

Last month Daniel Kim, interim county administrator, presented supervisors with a revised expenditure plan since the last time it was brought before the board, breaking down spending sections into different categories. Categories included priority categories, priority projects, strategic plan implementation and other funding uses.

Priority categories are areas staff feel need a separate ARP workgroup to further develop and prioritize projects. Priority projects, on the other hand, encompass efforts that are ready to launch that staff can execute quickly without necessarily needing a workgroup designated, Kim explained.

Workgroups would be led by county staff and would include subject matter experts within the county and outside the county and nonprofit entities with expertise in the given areas.

“These workgroups will, among other things, try to identify the outcomes and performance measures which will determine success for the various projects,” Kim said. “They’ll also be reviewing and refining and making recommendations on the proposals we have received to date and possibly other proposals they have developed.”

“They’ll ultimately be recommending to the board an approach on how to procure for these projects,” Kim continued.

The Capay Valley Health and Community Center, Yolo Regional Food Hub, Crisis Now and Welcome Baby are all a part of the priority project category with a total allocation of funds of $9.25 million.

Kim noted that $2 million from the child,

youth and family section was taken to fund the Welcome Baby project. Welcome Baby was proposed by First 5 Yolo to mitigate stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic and create resilience as early as the birth of a child to support those families struggling the most through the next three years of the pandemic recovery.

The priority projects were approved in a unanimous decision by supervisors.

“This is money to be spent right away,” Supervisor Jim Provenza said. “The other categories can be spent as quick as the workgroup comes back to the board.”

After several public commenters voiced concerns about the lack of funding being allocated toward aging and disability needs, supervisors held a discussion and made a motion to increase the funding from $250,000 to $600,000.

“$250,000 is peanuts,” Supervisor Angel Barajas said. “We do need to bump it up a little more.”

The motion passed with a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Oscar Villegas voting no. Villegas said he would rather have stayed firm with the original recommendations to allow staff to review the

proposals and come back with a new recommendation if needed.

Supervisors then moved on to the priority categories section, with Supervisor Don Saylor lobbying for more money for certain categories including housing and homelessness. The board eventually agreed upon a revised motion without increasing any monetary amounts, allowing for a 5-0 unanimous vote to approve the motion.

“The motion would become that we are accepting the amounts recommended by staff in the priority categories, but urging each group to come back with input if they feel they need more and a justification if they need more,” Provenza said.

Provenza emphasized that the amounts recommended by staff are “target amounts” for groups to spend and they may underspend or come back to the board with a compelling reason for needing more funding.

“The funding that we have identified is really for a 3-4 year period,” Kim explained. “So, even as we appropriate the funds now for fiscal year ‘21, ‘22 most of the funds won’t be expended in that fiscal year. So there is time to revisit and we plan on doing this at least on a bi-annual basis to review the spending.”