Barnstable County details ARPA spending, launches shared housing RFP and four major projects

Barnstable County Administrator Michael Dutton and Assistant County Administrator Vera Harik told the Assembly of Delegates on May 21 that the county is actively spending American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and preparing an RFP for a three-year shared regional housing consulting contract that will be led by the county.

The update matters because ARPA dollars are a major source for county capital and program work in the next 1–3 years. Harik said, “Of the $41,400,000 in ARPA grant funding we received…we had $7,500,000 left to spend.” She broke the allocation down by tranche and program, and described four large county projects underway with remaining ARPA balances.

Harik told delegates the ARPA allocation includes a towns tranche (about $10,000,000 allocated, roughly $1.1 million remaining to be spent for towns), $11,400,000 for housing projects (about $325,000 remaining), a $5,000,000 small/medium nonprofit grant program (about $500,000 remaining), and roughly $14,000,000 for county departmental projects (about $5,100,000 remaining). The four county projects she highlighted are:

- A large records digitization project to process roughly 2.5 million pages; the first shipment is expected to leave next week and the county’s IT staff are preparing to ingest the returned data.

- A PFAS remediation “pump-and-treat” system at the former fire training academy, with roughly $4,000,000 allocated and about $2.5 million left to spend; Harik said another approximately $1,000,000 in work is imminent.

- A private-well testing and analysis program expected to launch in June; public communications and preparatory data-gathering are under way and the health department staff will present more detail to the Board of Commissioners at its April 28 meeting.

- Water-quality laboratory upgrades and build-out, which Harik said are “well underway” and near completion.

Dutton framed the housing work as continuing a two-year ARPA-funded pilot and said the county will issue a request for proposals for consulting services to run the next three-year cycle and act as the lead municipal partner. He said the towns “know generally what their financial obligation will be” and that outreach to municipal managers has produced near-universal buy-in; Dutton added that one or two towns had not yet expressed interest but were still receiving services under the current contract.

Delegates pressed for details. Delegate O’Malley asked whether towns had resisted the cost-sharing formula; Dutton said outreach by county staff and town managers produced “almost universal buy in,” and that officials could cite expected costs within “several hundred dollars” for most towns.

Harik said county staff are prioritizing spending ARPA dollars quickly but reported no indication locally or nationally of any ARPA clawback discussions. “So far so good,” she said.

Next steps: the county will release the shared housing RFP, the private-well testing program is slated to begin in June, and the Board of Commissioners will receive additional detail on the well-testing plan at its next meeting.