COVER STORY
eral money. If the apple tree is there, you need to pick it!”
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY
Indian River County’s allocations approach runs somewhere
between the extremes of St. Lucie and Martin counties.
While Indian River does propose spending $3 million of its $31
million total allocation on water/sewer and broadband infrastructure
million on payments to essential workers $1.4 million and on
responses to the public health emergency $4.9 million. These
include the enhanced cleaning of public buildings, miscellaneous
quarantine-like expenses such as providing Plexiglas screens and
8
dividers. The county also wants to help small
businesses recover.
One interesting project that may or may
not qualify for ARPA funding is the creation of
a satellite campus at the old Fellsmere Inn in
partnership with Indian River State College.
The site would include a commercial bed and
breakfast operation that would provide jobs
and continuing education opportunities for
residents along with a new revenue stream for
the county.
Kristen Daniels, director of the Indian River
County office of management and budget, noted that despite the
county’s healthy growth rate of 6.14%, there have been serious
shortfalls in utilities, debt service and internal service revenue
streams to the tune of $19.7 million. The county will use a portion
of its ARPA funds to address some of that shortfall.
So, will the massive pot of federal money that ARPA brings be
enough to redress imbalances caused by the pandemic? And will
the virus’ continued mutation and virulence only bring bigger
bills in the future?
ARPA provides desperately-needed assistance to beleaguered
local government, after CARES funding helped small business
owners and individuals through paycheck programs.
ARPA is a federal stimulus program that attempts to keep control
of the purse strings in the hands of those at the local level. Perhaps
one day we will no longer need such enormous financial help from
the federal government. Until then ARPA recipients must leverage
all the help they can get to spread the wealth as widely as possible
and bring impetus to the nation’s economic recovery. v
projects, commissioners voted to spend a combined $5.5
TCBusiness.com
Thomas Lanahan,
executive director
of Treasure Coast
Regional Planning
Council
Although the stormwater retention project in White City is funded with money
from other sources, it is typical of the sort of project St. Lucie County is planning
to use its rescue funds on.
/www.oceansiderealtypartners.com
/TCBusiness.com