Special Board of Aldermen 09-08-2021 Page 2
last year and a half and/or for the last budget year. We could maybe now or later get into the details of why that could
help us in addition to filling that $1.2 million gap. Again, that’s not some kind of mismanagement by the School
Department. It’s simply that they were not allowed to charge for the lunches and of course they’re still feeding kids. The
normal revenue did not come in.
So with those ideas, we also are going to suggest an outreach to Nashua citizens through several avenues — virtual and
if we can do it, in person to get people’s input regarding kind of the basic approaches that we think could be used. First
we wanted to show you what we might present and maybe then together with input from citizens, we could decide how
the money should best be allocated for the benefit of Nashua. So with that, I’m going to give you Mr. Cummings and Ms.
Lindner who are going to present you with the details or the different approaches that we think might be possible.
Tim Cummings, Economic Development Director
If | may Madam President.
President Wilshire
Certainly. I’m sorry. Director Cummings.
Tim Cummings, Economic Development Director
Yes thank you. So for the record, Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development. I’m here this evening with Cheryl
Lindner the Chief of Staff, and not with us this evening John Griffin, Chief Financial Officer. He would have been part of
this presentation if he wasn’t on vacation. It should be noted from the onset that really John and Cheryl have taken the
lead in becoming the local experts on ARPA funding. | recently joined the team to just help facilitate the community
outreach effort that we'll be looking to undertake.
With that being said, my goal this evening is to hopefully develop some sort of consensus on our approach and make
sure we have an understanding of the framework or the guiding principles as we start this evening the conversation on
how to use the ARPA funds. My memo to you of August 26 speaks to this in more detail and the PowerPoint
presentation you’re about to receive will also recap what I’m about to say. What I’m hoping that we do this evening as |
said a second ago is start the conversation. By no means are we looking to conclude it but it would be good to develop
agreed upon approach and framework. With that being said, I’m going to hand it off to Cheryl and | will click through the
Slides.
Cheryl Lindner, Chief of Staff
Thank you everyone. So we’re going to start with a little bit of background and history on ARPA. On March 11, the
American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law. It’s a historic $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill and the aide for the
State of New Hampshire totals just over $994 million. The Treasury announced that Nashua will receive $16.1 million in
federal funds. As the Mayor said, $1.2 million is needed for Fiscal Year 2022 revenue replacement, which leaves us
with a balance of approximately $14,483,777 available to plan and spend. In addition to our amount, Hillsborough
County is set to receive approximately $81 million in funding and we are beginning talks with the County to see what
the plans are for their amount of funding.
There's four eligible uses for the funding with the Treasury interim guidance. So some of the areas for funding are
responding to acute pandemic response needs, filling revenue shortfalls, supporting communities and populations
hardest hit by COVID-19. And we're going to talk a little bit about that as we go through the presentation. These are
some of the links. If you go to the US Treasury site, the FAQs are very helpful as well as the Interim Final Rule.
There is an executive section for the Interim Final Rule. So you should start there if you want some light reading.
Then the Interim Final Rule is several hundred pages. So the links are US Treasury and you can type in “ARPA” and
it will fill in for you.
Some key dates for ARPA - March 3" is going to be the beginning of the recovery fund period. So expenses after
March 3" in those four areas will be covered and then we also have to spend the money or designate the money by
December 31, 2024. All funds must be spent and all work performed by December 31, 2026. So there's a little bit of
time they give you to finish your projects. They give you two additional years to finish the projects.
We're going to talk a little bit about the eligible uses and as | said, they fall into four buckets. One is the replacement of
public sector revenue loss. The second is to support public health response to the pandemic. The third is to address
the negative economic impacts and this is specific to workers, families, small businesses, impacted industries and the
