The Jefferson County Commission adopted an interagency agreement during its Dec. 31 meeting, committing nearly $250,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to the care of the county Facilities Department, potentially allowing the funds to be applied to the development of a new public health facility.
The interagency agreement with the Facilities Department, according to county officials, fulfills the U.S. Department of Treasury’s “obligation” criteria, which states that ARPA dollars would only be considered obligated if they were committed through a formal contract, invested, or otherwise committed before Dec. 31, 2024.
While counties were required to obligate their ARPA funding by the December deadline, the committed funds can be spent anytime before Jan. 1, 2027. Of the total, the county is considering allocating $188,000 to the Cottage Five restoration effort, which would see a building on the former Montana Developmental Center’s South campus converted to a new public health facility.
The Jefferson County Commission also committed roughly $85,000 to preemptively reimburse the Jefferson Local Development Corp. (JLDC) for a two-year extension of the contract of JLDC project coordinator Leah Lewis, who is responsible for the Cottage Five project’s grant seeking and planning.
“That should pretty much commit all our ARPA money,” said Commission Chair Cory Kirsch during the meeting.
The interagency agreement stipulates that the ARPA funding may be deployed for hazardous materials remediation, such as radon mitigation or asbestos removal, energy efficiency improvements to county buildings, including window replacement, remodeling county buildings, constructing or acquiring storage space for county offices, restoring historical buildings, such as Cottage Five, and to meet any match requirements for sought grants related to any work so listed.
The County Commission has not yet decided to complete the Cottage Five project; doing so, it has indicated, depends largely on receiving roughly $2 million in pending grant awards. Separately, the county has received a $426,500 commitment from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) through its Brownfields program to support certain hazardous materials abatement work.
At the Dec. 31 meeting, the Commission reviewed two proposals obtained by Lewis that included that abatement work as well as other infrastructural repairs The bids, from Bridger Creek Development in Dillon and Phoenix Unlimited in Helena, addressed a number of work items, such as roof repairs, landscaping, gutter replacement, or the removal of fixed structures and furniture.
Lewis encouraged the Commission to consider using the committed ARPA funding to quickly complete the roof repairs, arguing that damage to the current roof, if left unchecked, could cause additional structural damage. The Commission made no decision as to whether or not to proceed with the work, but, prior to contracting any labor for roof repair, will complete an internal evaluation of existing damage this spring.
