The City of Noblesville will receive $13 million from the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
Deputy Mayor Matt Light said guidelines are still forthcoming from the U.S. Dept. of Treasury on how to use the dollars.
“We still have decent indicators to go on from the act itself,” Light said. “There’s a formula for each city, town, county throughout the country, and the money will be sent from the federal government to the state, and then the state distributes it out to Noblesville and other cities.”
The city should receive the funds in the next week or so. There are certain categories it can spend the money on, such as COVID-19 impact, revenue replacement and infrastructure improvements. Examples specific to Noblesville are the small business resilience grants it issued and offering bonuses to city staff who worked throughout the pandemic, such as police, street department employees and more.
“I think we’ve approached it as a unique opportunity for the city, and we’ve approach it from policy perspective. This is a one-time investment to stimulate the economy,” Light said. “It isn’t money coming on a repetitive basis, so we don’t want to create obligations in the budget that couldn’t be met in the future. So, we have prioritized the infrastructure (category), with some stormwater infrastructure and wastewater infrastructure projects. So, one thing we’ve put toward the top of the list is to provide sewer service connection points in Wayne Township, which has been a real challenge for Noblesville for several years.”
Besides the $13 million, the City of Noblesville also received $2.2 million in two payments from the CARES Act that was passed in 2020.
For more, visit cityofnoblesville.org.
