Fort Myers Beach audit committee hears finance director on ARPA swap, jet‑vac purchase and town‑hall reimbursements

At a Fort Myers Beach Audit Committee meeting, Finance Director Joe Anczyk outlined current grant, loan and recovery work including an ARPA/insurance funding swap for a $1,000,000 grant for the Bay Oaks Recreational Campus, a planned purchase of a jet‑vac machine to clean storm‑water drains, and reimbursement work tied to state and federal disaster programs.

Anczyk said the $1,000,000 grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for Bay Oaks was originally planned to use a $1,000,000 ARPA match, but the town likely would not have a signed contract by the Dec. 31 deadline required to treat the ARPA money as obligated. "The last meeting in December the town council approved to have an alternate funding source for that $1,000,000 rather than ARPA and that would be the swap out, insurance proceeds," Anczyk said. He added the DEP grant expires Aug. 31 and the town is “under pressure to get this completed by August 31st in order to utilize that grant.”

Anczyk described ongoing work assembling documentation for FDEM and FEMA reimbursement reviews for emergency expenditures incurred during last year’s storms, and said finance staff are supporting contract preparation in the absence of a dedicated procurement manager. He reported team members are continuing year‑end reconciliations and work on unavailable and…