AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ADVISORY TASK FORCE AGENDA
TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2022 | 7PM
CHESTERTOWN TOWN HALL, 2nd FLOOR
Call to Order
Approve minutes from previous meeting
Chair’s Report
- Report to Town Council on July 5th
- We were pleased to report that there were 34 Letters of Intent equaling $5,823,288 in Funding Requests.
| Category | Total |
| Infrastructure | $985,000 |
| Community Building Repairs | $964,000 |
| Housing | $897,500 |
| Education | $826,000 |
| Parks and Recreation | $681,500 |
| Public Safety | $450,000 |
| Tourism | $416,000 |
| Health and Wellness | $288,288 |
| Food Insecurities | $225,000 |
| Transportation | $90,000 |
| Grand Total | $5,823,288 |
- The Council was pleased that we created a Conflict-of-Interest Matrix.
- Criticism and inaccuracies in local media
Old Business
- Status on three (3) new task force members nominated by Mayor & Council
- REMINDER – Two initial appointees were unable to attend meetings and one initial appointee self-resigned due to conflict of interest. LOIs were due on June 30th and discussions have been procedural, educational, and operational in nature.
- Discuss and decide whether we should vote on the LOIs until we have a fully representative Task Force (we can discuss LOIs but we cannot vote to pass or recommend).
- The Nomination and Appointee Vote Process for ARPA Replacements
- Step One: Nominations were held during the July 5th Town Council Meeting
- Two people were nominated.
- Step Two: A Council vote to appoint will be held during the July 18th Town Council Meeting
- One person is slated to be nominated.
- Once there are approved appointees, the Task Force can on-board and provide them historical background, give them access to our Google Drive, and answer any questions prior to our July 26th ARPA meeting.
- Step One: Nominations were held during the July 5th Town Council Meeting
- REMINDER – The Task Force is not accepting or declining LOIs or applications and we cannot give a final yes or no to anyone. We are advising and recommending to the Town Council. Thus, Town Council ought to speak in public about the final status of LOIs and Applications.
New Business
- Discuss and decide on referring to LOIs by their corresponding numbers to maintain Open Meetings compliance and confidentially.
- Discuss and decide ways to categorize the LOIs by Ward impact.
- Refresh Task Force on the ARPA Process evaluation criteria
- Refer to ARPA Application Process presentation
- Discuss and decide for all LOIs: do we want to wait until the Town Council decides if they want a full application on any rejected LOIs before we send out Applications?
- Discuss and decide on effectiveness of the ARPA LOI Evaluation template and if it needs to be modified to include more/less information.
- Refer to the ARPA LOI Evaluation Template
- Discuss and decide on standard evaluation tools for our meetings.
- EXAMPLES:
- LOIs that are not ARPA compliant or are ineligible can be moved to dismiss “en bloc”.
- Public Safety LOIs can be immediately sent to Town Council for their review and vote so we can move to approve “en bloc”.
- We can vote to quickly take a “temperature vote” on each LOI by number and without discussion – yes, no, need more information/discussion
- Those with unanimous yes, we can move to approve “en bloc” to the application phase.
- Those with unanimous no, we can move to dismiss “en bloc” and document reason based upon our scoring matrix.
- Those without unanimous yes/no and those needing more information/discussion, we table to the next meetings to discuss.
- EXAMPLES:
Requests from pubic to be recognized
Adjournment