Green River council votes to request $30,000 in county ARPA funds for parks rehabilitation

Green River City Council members present voted Friday to request about $30,000 in county American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to rehabilitate city parks.

Unidentified Speaker 2, who opened the special meeting at 3:04 p.m., said the county had discovered what the speaker described as an accounting error that left a remaining pocket of ARPA money available to distribute. "They thought they had spent down everything that they needed to, and they now realized they had, like, this big pocket of money that they're trying to spend down," the speaker said.

Council members discussed broad, quickly executable uses that would likely fit ARPA spending guidelines. "The easiest probable spend for that without necessarily adding in a big chunk of other city dollars would be rehabilitation of our parks and including, like, our ballparks and some of the stuff at the Okay Anderson," Unidentified Speaker 2 said. The speaker emphasized that the motion could be loose in scope rather than highly specific.

A motion to request the county ARPA funds for rehabilitation of city parks was made during the meeting. Unidentified Speaker 1 stated, "I'll make a motion to approve the ARPA ARPA funds to rehabilitate our parks." A second was recorded by the meeting chair as coming from Councilman Larry Packer.

During a roll call, the meeting record shows Larry Packer responded "Aye," Ben Lenhoff responded "Aye," and Beau (Beau Harrison) responded "Aye." The motion passed by the members present. The council then moved to adjourn; the special meeting ended at 3:07 p.m.

The council did not specify a detailed project list or timeline at the meeting; members said the request could be broadly written to allow staff to identify quick, ARPA-eligible park projects. Funding amount mentioned in the meeting was approximately $30,000 and was described as county-available ARPA funds that communities could draw down. The next procedural steps—such as formal request submission to the county or project selection—were not specified in the meeting record.

Meeting participants identified in the record included Councilman Larry Packer, Councilman Ben Lenhoff and Councilman Beau Harrison (noted as on the phone). Speakers in the transcript identifying motions and conducting the meeting are recorded only by speaker numbers; the meeting record does not attribute the motion-maker and meeting chair by full name in the transcript itself.