#Middlebury #ARPA
By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
Middlebury resident Richard Dews asked the Middlebury Board of Selectman via email on April 22 about the town’s plans to spend the $2.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds it is receiving. The first $1.15 million payment was received June 22, 2021, and the second $1.15 million is to be paid in June 2022.
Dews said he had seen newspaper articles reporting how Southbury, Woodbury and Oxford were using ARPA funds, noting they formed committees or asked for public input by survey or held public forums, all aimed at determining how the funds should be used. He said all he had seen about Middlebury’s plans was a statement from the November 2021 Board of Finance meeting mentioning the two payments.
He asked where he might find any published information on meetings or public input for a plan for Middlebury’s funds he might have missed, and asked, if no decision had yet been made on spending, when residents would hear the details.
He received an April 28 response from First Selectman Edward B. St. John via his former executive assistant, Barbara Whitaker, that stated the Board of Selectmen had advised the public and the department heads to attend Board of Selectmen meetings with written requests for ARPA funding for required projects. It said some internal requests had been received. It also invited Dews to attend a selectmen’s meeting to discuss his recommendations during public comments.
Dews attended the May 16 meeting and asked how the town was handling ARPA funds. St. John responded that, when the town first got the money, the selectmen decided they didn’t need to form a committee or have public hearings; that instead requests for spending the money could be presented to the selectmen.
Initially, funds could be spent only in three categories, sewer, water and broadband. Dews noted that, in January 2022, the U.S. Treasury broadened the categories in which the funds could be spent. He said it now includes assistance to households for rent and utilities. “More people than you think in town are struggling,” he said. He wondered if some of the funds could be used to help them. Perhaps, he said, money could be set aside in a fund to help them.
Dews mentioned funds could be spent on parks and walking trails. He also said some funds might go to the Middlebury Historical Society, the town emergency fund or the town food bank.
St. John explained that most of the first payment of $1.15 million has been spoken for. As for the second payment, he said the Middlebury Volunteer Fire Department has requested a new vehicle, a boat and “medical stuff.”
He asked Dews to email the Board of Selectmen a list of his requests, which Dews did, listing four items: assistance to the needy and elderly for mortgages, rent, food and cash; creation of a special fund for heating and utilities; construction of walking trails and a parking area on the 100 acres of the former Toll Brothers property now owned by the town; and funding to nonprofits such as the Middlebury Historical Society, the Middlebury Community Emergency Fund, the Middlebury Food Bank and other nonprofits needing assistance.
Dews later told this reporter, “These other towns are telling you where they are spending the money, but in Middlebury there’s nothing. I was just asking.”
