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Date: 3/9/2022
HILLTOWNS – With town halls opening, and face masks coming off staff and students at Gateway schools on March 14, residents of the Hilltowns are slowly getting back to a more normal routine and looking forward to spring.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted those routines for the past two years, starting with Gov. Charlie Baker’s declaration of a state of emergency in Massachusetts on March 10, 2020. The pandemic closed town halls amid shortages of personal protective equipment and personnel, even while the towns had to meet the needs of an increasingly elderly population – the group at highest risk to be sickened and die from the virus. Town administrators, boards of health, councils on aging and first responders rallied, in many cases taking a lead on securing needed resources.
The towns also received state and federal funding, but many reported that the initial allocations of federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds were too restrictive, and most of the communities were not able to find enough eligible expenses, forcing them to return some of the funds or not accept them at all.
The more recent pandemic relief law, the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA), has looser restrictions for towns that receive less than $10 million, according to one town administrator, which will allow most towns to take advantage of the federal aid.
Chester
Katherine Warden, Chester town administrator, said the town was able to use some of the $122,024 in CARES Act funds it was eligible to receive.
“The CARES Act was a quarterly reporting. We used it for the basics – cleaning and sanitizing our town hall,” Warden said. She said the town also paid for someone to do COVID-19 contact tracing, and bought laptops and software so employees could network and work from home.
Warden said all of the CARES Act money had to be expended before Dec. 31, 2021. She said Chester will be return its unspent funds, adding that the CARES Act money was only available as reimbursement. “This is how it is – it was so tight for small communities.”
“The reason we sent so much back – one, it was very restrictive on what you could use it on. It needed to prevent COVID. We were fortunate to get a lot of PPE (personal protective equipment) given to us, that’s another reason,” Warden said, adding, “It didn’t work for us. The main thing was that it was too restrictive. The Hilltowns just buckled down and did what we had to do.”
She said that Chester’s ARPA allocation of $409,203, half of which has been received already, looks more promising.
“There are plenty of ways to spend it, but we haven’t made the final decisions yet. Currently, the discussion is to put a list together. The Finance Committee will put it together and the Select Board will make the final decision. We had three public meetings on it on Zoom,” she said.
Warden said when ARPA first came out, it was very clear-cut.
According to the state Department of Local Services, ARPA funds had to be used to respond to the public health emergency or its negative economic impacts, to provide premium pay to employees providing essential work during the public health emergency, loss of revenue due to COVID-19, or for water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.
But Warden said as of January 2022, if an allocation to a town is under $10 million, the restrictions have been lifted.
“You can pretty much do what you need to,” Warden said. She said there are still some restrictions: “You can’t take the money and put it in the stabilization fund and hold it for a rainy day, you need to spend it.”
Montgomery
For the town of Montgomery, CARES Act funds didn’t prove to be useful at all.
“Montgomery did not take CARES funds because the allowable activities did not fit our circumstances or our expenditures,” said Michael Morrissey, chairman of the Board of Selectmen. The town was offered $76,706 under the CARES Act.
“We did, however, receive or will receive a total of approximately $250,000 from the ARPA funding. Currently the town has earmarked the funding to be used to reconfigure office areas to improve social distancing and air filtration/ventilation. Another project is to invest in creating remote access (work at home) so that our employees could continue to perform essential functions should we need to close down the town hall as we did during the peak of the COVID pandemic,” Morrissey said.
“These projects are in the request for proposal stages and no funds have been spent as of today. The only ARPA money expended was stipends that were approved for our first responders; each eligible first responder received $655,” Morrissey added.
Huntington
The town of Huntington received a total of $192,382 in CARES Act funds, and spent $87,468, much of it on direct staffing costs such as overtime, additional hires, and filling in for staff who tested positive for COVID-19. The funds were also spent on cleaning and disinfecting of public buildings, PPE, air purifiers and hardware to help run virtual meetings.
All of the expenses are detailed on a 12-page spreadsheet available at Town Hall.
Administrative Assistant Jennifer Peloquin said plans have not yet been settled for the $648,329 in ARPA funds allocated to Huntington.
Russell
Russell Selectboard Chair Wayne Precanico said of the $56,250 received by the town in CARES Act funds; they spent $10,000 retrofitting doors at town buildings, $6,000 on computers and $9,800 to upgrade the town’s website, currently under construction.
Russell was eligible for a total of $158,878 in CARES Act funds.
Of the $535,641 in ARPA funds allocated to Russell, Precanico said the town spent $150,000 on a full-time police officer through June 2023, and $29,000 for essential employee pandemic service bonuses.
The town of Russell is also considering a request to spend some of the ARPA funding on expanding broadband access to underserved residents. Last fall, the town sold the municipally owned cable television system to Comcast, and through the process heard from 40 households who will not get service without investment in new infrastructure.
“We don’t have any numbers yet for what, if any, money we need to set aside for underserved broadband services. Once we have that number, we’ll figure out if it will be ARPA, free cash, or stabilization funds that we use. It depends on what that number is,” Precanico said.
“We are looking to update the HVAC systems at our school – that’s being looked at by contractors now, and we also have $50,000 set aside for a General Knox Road study,” he added. The former Russell Elementary School is used as offices for the Police Department and other town agencies.
Blandford
Select Board Administrative Assistant Joann Martin said Blandford has received half of its ARPA allocation of $374,231.
“The town has received $188,000 so far, which is half of what is expected. We are having a hard time finding out when the rest will arrive. I believe we have distributed all of the $188,000 except for about $45,000. So far, we have taken care of infrastructure and loss of business coverage,” Martin said.
Funding has been allocated to the Highway Department for drainage and to the Water Department for granular-activated carbon filters. Other funding went to Iron Blender studios for an upgrade of the town website, and to Blandford Broadband for resilient backhaul connections.
Both the Blandford Country Store and Blandford Fair received funds to make up for lost business, and the Blandford Fair also received funding for an infrastructure upgrade, according to Martin.
Martin said she did not have the information on the $111,091 in CARES Act funding that Blandford was eligible to receive.
ARPA expenses must be designated for spending by Dec. 31, 2024, and actual payments made before Dec. 31, 2026, according to the state Division of Local Services.