Atchison County commissioners on Dec. 30 approved a set of accounting corrections and reallocations for American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds after the county’s finance director said several expenses were recorded with service dates that fell outside the ARPA allocation window.

Finance Director Mark Zeltner, who participated by Zoom, told the board that a $100,000 payment to Project Concern carried a date in 2025 and therefore could not be reported as a 2024 ARPA allocation unless it had been entered into a contract. Zeltner asked the commission to authorize a reimbursement from the general fund and then have ARPA reimburse the general fund for the 2024 appropriation. Chair (unnamed) moved the accounting correction; the motion was seconded and approved with a recorded vote of "Passes 3 to 0."

Zeltner also raised an information-technology invoice originally billed to vendor ConvergeOne for roughly $3,370.41 that included warranties and service dates extending beyond 2024. Because those warranty/service periods extend past the ARPA timing window, the county offset the charge using another ConvergeOne invoice and asked the commission to approve a journal entry to reimburse ARPA for the excess license/warranty portion (reported to the board as $3,003.70) and to apply ARPA funding instead to a Computer Information Concepts (CIC) Peopleware agreement. The commission approved that motion unanimously.

Finally, Zeltner recommended canceling the remaining authorizations in the ARPA fund for projects that were completed without using their full allotments. He listed remaining authorization balances the county will close out: road and bridge facility — $1,087,297.50; appraiser’s office remodel — $25,114.77; generator — $2,611.66; courthouse renovations — $526.65. The board voted to cancel those remaining authorizations, again recording the vote as "Passes 3 to 0." Zeltner clarified that "no money is exchanging" and that "all the ARPA is spent; it's just reallocating these to the proper time frame and to the proper expenses." (Quote attributed to Mark Zeltner.)

Why it matters: Federal guidance requires ARPA expenditures to be reported within specified timeframes and, in some cases, tied to executed contracts. The accounting actions approved by the commission are bookkeeping and reporting steps intended to align previously approved expenditures with Treasury portal requirements.

What happens next: County staff will complete the requested journal entries and submit corrected reporting through the Treasury portal and include a summary of the closed authorizations in the minutes, the finance director said.