During their meeting on July 9, the Warren Town Council — with two of five members, Steve Calenda and Keri Cronin, absent — committed to spending the remainder of the Town’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding that was originally awarded in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Town originally received $3,141,809.60 from the federal government, which had a requirement attached for all funding to be obligated towards applicable uses by the end of this calendar year.

At the meeting last Tuesday night, Town Manager Brian Sullivan provided a total breakdown of ARPA-funded projects, including updated spending since the last such accounting took place in May.

As of last week, there was around $1.39 million left in ARPA funding, but Sullivan said $906,163 of that had been obligated for a variety of projects as of June 30, including:

• $625,000 to replace the primary sludge tanks and rails at the Warren Wastewater Treatment Plant
• $112,000 for repairs to the Town Hall chimney
• $86,000 for a new police vehicle with accompanying computer system
• $50,000 to bolster Hope & Main’s “Main Street Meals” program (the third of a three-year commitment agreed to by the Council)
• $16,663 to pay an outstanding bill from the Town’s partner engineering firm, Fuss & O’Neill
• $9,000 to the Warren Health Equity Zone
• $7,500 to the Historic Warren Armory for a one-time funding assistance

Sullivan then provided a list of proposed projects for the Council’s consideration that would obligate the remainder of the $484,500 in ARPA funding that had yet to be spoken for. Those proposals were unanimously agreed upon by the Town Council, and included:

• $250,000 to purchase a new scale and upgrade chutes at the Warren Transfer Station. “I understand it’s from the 70s and beyond its life expectancy right now,” Sullivan said. “It’s still working relatively fine but I think that gets used a lot. An update at the transfer station would benefit many residents who use it.”
• $100,000 for road paving. Leveraging a program from the State Department of Transportation, the Town will be able to receive $30,000 from the state to supplement the $100,000 spent by the town to repair roads.
• $50,000 to fix drainage issues on Fern Drive. Sullivan said the Town has a grant to help cover the cost of these repairs, but that requires a match, which the ARPA funds would be able to provide.
• $20,000 for additional repairs to Town Hall, which Sullivan specified would be used to address windows at the ground level.
• $20,000 to fund the match necessary to use a grant acquired to perform flood mitigation work on Market Street
• $16,000 to purchase software for the Warren Senior Center. “Currently, all of the information at the senior center is created by paper in hand, including emergency contact information and who is in the building,” Sullivan said. This would help…monitor who comes in, who’s there, the programs and being able to run programs with this. Basically it would bring [Senior Center Director Kyra Little] up to the 21st century in being able to run the senior center.” Sullivan said the same software was being used in Bristol, Barrington and East Providence currently.
• $15,000 to replace 10-12 computers at Warren Town Hall. “Many of the desktops in the Town Hall are Covid- or Pre-Covid dated…Their life expectancy is almost at its end,” Sullivan said. “In the digital age, if those computers go down, especially in the finance and Town Clerk’s office, we would certainly have some concerns.”
• $13,500 for an industrial fan to promote circulation in the Wastewater Treatment Facility. Sullivan said it had been broken for “a long time” and constituted a “health hazard” if not repaired.

Accounting of spending to date

The Times-Gazette has been able to account for each purchase made with the ARPA money to date.

The Town spent no ARPA money from June 30, 2020 to July 1, 2021.

They committed their first batch of ARPA money from April to June, 2022 in the amount of $53,491.53, which went to the following uses:

Editor’s note: The Council approved $250,000 to be set aside for a building facade restoration program, where applicants could get up to $25,000 in ARPA-funded grants to fix up storefronts in the Town’s Qualified Census Tract area. When you see “facade grant”, that is what it refers to.

• $14,634 to HCH Enterprises, LLC, to conduct study on possibility of municipal broadband
• $12,500 to Richardson’s Kitchen & Bar for a facade grant
• $11,600 to Justin Silva for a facade grant
• $8,500 to Ryan Tucker for a facade grant
• $3,257.53 to Dish (Councilwoman Keri Cronin’s business) for a facade grant
• $2,400 to HCH for additional consulting
• $600 for a non-specified “Reimbursement”

For Fiscal Year 22-23 (spanning July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023), the Town utilized $633,954 of ARPA funds to the following items:

• $225,000 to supplement the Town budget and avoid a deficit
• $50,000 to Hope & Main for their “Nourish Our Neighbors” program, part of a three-year commitment to the nonprofit group agreed to by the Town Council
• $31,993 to East Bay Community Action Program
• $31,746.03 to Shanix Technology to upgrade the Town Council with new cameras and equipment to enable remote public meeting coverage
• $28,687.50 to Focus IT LLC to support information technology at the Warren Police Department
• $25,000 to William Schaff for a facade grant
• $25,000 to “MoDo” for a facade grant
• $24,600 to the James Tavares Fire Station for a facade grant
• $24,550 to Sacoccio & Associates for preliminary work regarding a new fire/rescue station
• $17,500 to Mariano Rocha for a facade grant (broken out into two grants of $8,750)
• $16,612.50 to J&K Sanitation Inc.
• $15,000 to Councilman Brandt Heckert for a facade grant
• $12,500 to Justin Silva for facade grant
• $12,500 to Doreen Rousseau for a facade grant
• $12,500 to Pirri DaSilveira for a facade grant
• $12,500 to Richardson’s Kitchen & Bar for a facade grant
• $11,403.05 to Hai T Le for a facade grant
• $11,179.09 to Fuss & O’Neill Inc., the Town’s engineering firm, for an unspecified use
• $9,757 to Focus IT LLC in three separate payments for “support”
• $9,000 to HCH Consulting
• $8,500 to Ryan Tucker for a facade grant
• $8,475 to Velocity Solutions for IT support
• $5,869.98 to replace less than anticipated revenue in the Town’s General Fund
• $3,739.66 to Dish for facade grant
• $3,500 to Treffley LLC for a facade grant
• $3,281 to Velocity Solutions for “Support & Services” and “Onsite Support”
• This fiscal year also included $6,440 in refunds of ARPA money

During the 2023-24 fiscal year, the Town obligated ARPA funds for a list of 12 specific uses worth a total of $1,061,869.50 in that time frame. They include:

• $463,312.50 to repair a collapsed sewer line under Franklin Street
• $225,000 to supplement the FY23 budget, specifically to pay for salary supplements for fire and police personnel
• $138,500 to replace sewer manholes the sewer line between them on Fern Drive
• $64,775 to make repairs to the track at Veterans Field
• $50,000 to fund the second of a three-year commitment to Hope & Main’s “Nourish Our Neighbors” program
• $39,868 to pay for an IT consultant to help upgrade police department computers
• $26,000 to make critical repairs to Town wastewater treatment facility
• $24,550 for architectural/engineering work for a new Fire/EMS headquarters
• $12,300 for repairs to “historic fire station” (not specified which one)
• $9,200 to make measurements for critical fix at wastewater treatment facility
• $5,083 for a facade grant to an unspecified business
• $3,281 to migrate police department email system to Microsoft 365 government edition

That brought the town to a total of $1,477,145.90 left as of the May 14, 2024 meeting of the Town Council.

At that meeting, the Council agreed to use ARPA funding for the police vehicle and the Town Hall chimney repair mentioned in the opening of this story, as well as an outstanding bill on a debris transfer trailer for DPW.

With the projects approved by the Town Council last week, it marks the end of the one-time federal Covid funding for Warren.