Council votes to ‘move around’ ARPA funds

Very early in the current presidential administration, a huge spending bill was passed called the American Recovery Plan Act that was sold as being needed to prop up local governments because their tax revenue was expected to drop precipitously in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

In truth, many municipalities — including Boulder City — actually saw their tax receipts increase substantially during the pandemic. But the funding had been offered and accepted. It did, however, come with a caveat: It had to be spent by the end of 2024.

That was the conundrum faced by the city council this week. Angela Manninen, budget manager, explained the situation.

“In October of 2022, $2 million of ARPA funding was allocated to the Municipal Golf Course irrigation/water conservation project,” she said. “That project is going forward but will not be completed by December of 2024. ARPA funding has a requirement that if you don’t spend it or have it encumbered with a contract by Dec. 31, 2024, we have to give it back to the federal government.”

Manninen explained that the city does have other existing and completed projects that would qualify for ARPA funding and that the value of those projects was about $1.7 million and said that staff was asking the council to rescind a previous ordinance and pass a new one that would allow the city to move the funding set aside for a new irrigation system over to make them, in terms of accounting, the recipient of the ARPA funds so the city could avoid having to give the money back.

Staff’s request, as outlined by Manninen, was approved by the council unanimously without any discussion Tuesday night.

In mid-2023, in an interview with the Review specifically about ARPA funding, former City Manager Taylour Tedder pointed to the irrigation project at the golf course as a prime example of a large and expensive project that the city would probably not be able to do without the one-time infusion of federal money.

But the road to even beginning that project has been long and has included multiple town-hall style public meetings and the development of multiple proposed plans for reducing turn in order to keep the city compliant with the requirements of AB356.

That law, passed in 2021, says that it is illegal to use Colorado River water to irrigate turf deemed as non-functional starting Jan. 1, 2027. Because the deadline is still a couple of years off, the city is not technically out of compliance yet.

However, the last time the council discussed the golf course just two weeks ago, they voted to defy the Southern Nevada Water Authority water budget for golf courses and use about 110 acre/feet of water more than budgeted and just pay the fine.

The word fine is actually misleading. It is not a specific amount tied to a specific action, rather, it mandates that course owners pay up to nine times the highest amount charged for water in that year to the utility that provides the water.

Since Boulder City as an entity owns both the golf course and the utility, they are, in effect, fining themselves and paying themselves. The plan, which was approved earlier this month, envisions charging golfers a small about more per round to cover the fines.

In a previous conversation with the Review, SNWA spokesperson Bronson Mack said that no penalties beyond the higher cost of the water had yet been discussed for courses that refuse to come into compliance with the water budget. “We hope that all of the courses do that voluntarily,” he said. He also noted that all other golf courses in the greater Las Vegas area had already come into compliance or had plans in place to do so with the BC municipal course being the lone exception.

The completed projects that will account for ARPA spending instead of the irrigation project include more than $261,000 in improvements at City Hall, $222,000 to install video security systems at all city facilities, about $210,000 in improvements to city parks and almost $230,000 to pay off principal and interest for golf carts that have been purchased by the city, mostly for use at Boulder Creek Golf Club.