Slusser Shares More About ARPA Funds At Glen Carbon Meeting

GLEN CARBON - Madison County Treasurer Chris Slusser shared more information with Glen Carbon trustees on Tuesday about the $51 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds the county received from the federal government from 2021 to 2022.

Slusser said at this week’s Village Board meeting that while Madison County wasn’t in desperate need of ARPA funding like other counties, it turned out to be “bonus money” which has gone to support several local infrastructure projects.

In 2021, Madison County received the first half of $51 million in ARPA funding from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. With the first half, the county chose to fund 17 projects including infrastructure, storm water, cybersecurity, pandemic response and law enforcement projects. In 2022, the second half of the funding was allocated towards sewer, drinking water, stormwater projects and more.

Slusser said at the meeting on Tuesday that none of it was allocated towards employee bonuses, as other county treasurers had reportedly done.

“What we’ve done with the $51 million in ARPA funds is we have partnered with a lot of municipalities on infrastructure projects,” Slusser said. “I talked to county treasurers, a lot of them were giving bonuses to employees and things like that, and I was like, ‘That would never fly with taxpayers in Madison County.’”

Madison County specifically sought to allocate the funds to communities who otherwise couldn’t afford to finance their own infrastructure projects, Slusser said.

“We’ve really decided to partner with a lot of communities with infrastructure projects that they normally would not be able to fund, or they would have to borrow or issue a lot of bonds to pay for it,” Slusser said. “They put some skin in the game and we did too, and I think it’s been a good strategy and the whole county will benefit from that.”

For more information, including specific breakdowns of how and where Madison County spent these ARPA funds, see previous coverage on Riverbender.com from 2021 and 2022.

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