Collective Choir, Children's Museum could dip into county ARPA fund

Avery Shanahan, The Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wis.
·3 min read

Aug. 9—EAU CLAIRE — Unallocated American Rescue Plan Act funds from Eau Claire County could be used to support two local nonprofit organizations.

The Collective Choir and Eau Claire Children's Museum each requested $100,000 from the county's ARPA Recovery Assistance Grant Program.

But at its meeting on Tuesday, the county's Administration Committee decided it did not yet have enough information to move forward with allocating additional ARPA funds to those organizations.

Supervisor Jerry Wilke requested a multiple-sentence description of what the funding would do for the community.

"Before I would be comfortable (deciding) on these outside applications here, I have to have an answer to the question 'what am I funding?'" Wilke said.

The two organizations were among those to apply for one part of the county's overall $20.3 million APRA program. Component Two is about $1.56 million specifically intended for businesses and nonprofits with forward-thinking and innovative projects, programs or efforts that would assist the greater community in recovering from the pandemic.

A committee reviewing applications chose 22 of them, which accounted for all but $1,500 of Component Two's funds. While the children's museum and choir were not among that group, the application review committee asked the Administration Committee to increase Component Two by $198,500 to fund them, too.

Supervisor Nancy Coffey raised the question of where the funding would come from if it did not come from Component Two funding.

County Administrator Kathryn Schauf informed the committee that the county still has about $14 million in ARPA funds that have not yet been allocated.

The application review committee also requested funding outside of Component Two ARPA funds for an applicant that did not meet criteria, yet received a high score from the committee.

Cinnaire Solutions Corp. is not located in Eau Claire County, making it ineligible to receive grant recovery assistance. However, Supervisor Dane Zook, a member of the application review committee, explained that Cinnaire Solutions is looking to construct affordable housing in the city of Eau Claire.

"They didn't meet the criteria on that level, (but) everything else realistically does, so that's why we turned it over to you," Zook said. "We can't score something that we are not eligible to score, but it is a worthwhile project."

The committee requested to see the application that the ARPA Grant Application Review Committee used to score Cinnaire's affordable housing plans, to determine whether or not to provide money to them.

"I would be interested in the application because affordable in one community is different than what's affordable in other communities," Supervisor Judy Gatlin said.

The committee will take action on these items at its meeting next week.

Additional ARPA talks

The committee also was presented with multiple internal ARPA funding applications.

One of these applications included funding for additional prosecutors within the District Attorney's Office to address the significant criminal trial backlog. The backlog is a result of postponed trial cases due to COVID-19.

The committee came to a consensus to recommend the application for funding.