SMITH COUNTY — Commissioners for Smith County held their first public hearing where they discussed how to possibly spend the $45 million the area would be receiving under the American Rescue Plan Act. According to our news partner KETK, the law was passed under the Biden administration and allocates $22.5 million to the county this year along with another $22.5 million in 2022. The act was passed to help communities across the nation deal with lost revenue and higher than normal expenses during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
ARPA is written so that the money can only be given to certain projects that have to do with lost money from Covid that would have been spent on other county needs They include:<\/p>\n
Support public health expenditures
\nNegative economic impacts caused by public health emergency
\nReplace lost public sector revenue
\nPremium pay for essential workers
\nInvest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure<\/p>\n
Smith County Judge Nathaniel Moran said that he had several guiding principles that he had envisioned for how to spend the funds, including projects that will save tax dollars in the long run and projects that have the broadest reach within the county. Moran closed the meeting by saying that this would be the first of several meetings that the court would be having on the issue and urged the public to make their voices heard when a landing page is finished on the county website later in the week.<\/p>\n
ARPA states that the funds must be committed by 2024 and spent by 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SMITH COUNTY — Commissioners for Smith County held their first public hearing where they discussed how to possibly spend the $45 million the area would be receiving under the American Rescue Plan Act. According to our news partner KETK, the law was passed under the Biden administration and allocates $22.5 million to the county this … Continue reading Commissioners hold first public hearing on spending $45 million from American Rescue Plan Act<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1026692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2021\/06\/SMITHCOUNTYSEAL-e1623853490645-150x150.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Smith County holds first public hearing on spending $45 million from American Rescue Plan Act","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 03:57:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2021\/06\/SMITHCOUNTYSEAL-e1623853490645-150x150.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Smith County holds first public hearing on spending $45 million from American Rescue Plan Act","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026689"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1027028,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026689\/revisions\/1027028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1026689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1026689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}