City secures more ARPA funds

The Sundance City Council has successfully tapped into an additional infusion of $30 million into the state’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) fund for water and sewer grants.

The city last week secured funding approval from the State Lands and Investments Board (SLIB) for one of the remaining two applications on its wishlist.

The funding will be used to update the only block on Ryan Street that still has old waterlines and reconnect three existing water service lines, at a cost of $195,157.

However, the final stage of the Old Stoney restoration will need to wait a little longer than anticipated.

Ryan Street

SLIB met on Thursday to consider how best to allocate this extra $30 million, focusing solely on project requests that had already been submitted during the previous two rounds of funding.

Once again, there were considerably more requests on the list than money with which to fund them. With $125 million among the 61 applications remaining to be funded, SLIB started with a $95 million deficit.

The City of Sundance was successful during the second round of ARPA applications, receiving $1.3 million to fix a major water leak and relocate service taps located on an old, four-inch galvanized waterline.

This left two projects on the city’s list. The second was a capital improvement plan, through which the city hoped to map out future projects and development; the funding requested for this was $50,000.

SLIB was able to approve 19 new applications for funding with the infusion of $30 million, but this left 46 projects on the table.

The capital improvement plan was turned down because the Office of State Lands and Investments (OSLI) applied a number of principles to the list after giving each project a priority score. One of those principles was that only the first priority application from an applicant would be considered.

As the Ryan Street project had been approved, the capital improvement plan was not considered for funding.

Old Stoney

According to Mayor Paul Brooks, funding of the final phase of the Old Stoney project was removed from SLIB’s agenda due to a technical issue.

The city had asked for $2.3 million to complete the auditorium level of the building, which was added to the Wyoming Business Council (WBC) budget as a line item by Senator Ogden Driskill.

However, says the mayor, there was some question as to which of WBC’s programs the project should be submitted to. The city went with WBC’s recommendation, but later discovered that the program would require a match of $400,000.

The city will need to start over and apply through the original program, says Brooks, but this will likely delay things by at least a few months.