What is ARPA?
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed by the federal government to support the economic and public health recovery of the United States from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
ARPA designated $350 billion in direct aid to state, local, and tribal governments. The City of Holyoke will receive over $29 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the United States Treasury Department to assist in the recovery from COVID-19.
The United States Department of the Treasury continues to issue guidance on the use of Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. The City of Holyoke will provide updates to the requirements for funding as federal guidance is received. For additional information, please see:
Interim Rule (These are current Treasury guidelines but still subject to change)
2023 ARPA Allocation Process
The City received over 80 applications requesting over $60 million in ARPA funds. At this time, the City estimates that $19 million will be made available in this round.
Applications have been reviewed for initial US Treasury eligibility and grouped by eligibility code (EC) for ease of review. If an application is selected for an ARPA award, final scopes and budgets will be developed prior to execution of an ARPA agreement.
The ARPA Allocation Spreadsheet includes columns for recommendations by the Office for Community Development, the Citizens Advisory Committee, the DGR Committee of the City Council, the City Council, and the Mayor. Each column will be completed over the next few weeks and made public.
City officials continue to work with HRIA to finalize analysis of community needs in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. While the emergency aspect of the pandemic is behind us, newly identified needs continue to emerge. The City is planning to make the ARPA awards during the first week of June, however, this time period is flexible.
Questions regarding individual proposals should be directed to the Office for Community Development and not to the applicants. This is to ensure that applicants are not inundated with similar questions.
2023 ARPA Allocation Spreadsheet- there are hyperlinks within this Spreadsheet to the individual groups of applications in each category. Applications were submitted through the GoogleForm platform.
2023 ARPA Applications Budget Sheets- each proposed budget is contained in this indexed PDF.
2023 ARPA Application Materials- all of the 2023 ARPA Application materials can be reviewed in this GoogleDrive.
A thirty public comment period on the 2023 American Rescue Plan Act Applications will open on May 3, 2023. All comments must be received by Monday June 5, 2023 by 12:00p.m. EST. Comments may be submitted in writing by first class mail, email to zoellera@holyoke.org or provided verbally in person/over the telephone to an Office for Community Development employee.
On September 14, 2021 Acting Mayor Murphy announced his first round of ARPA allocations, totaling approximately $14.86 million. Those allocations can be seen HERE.
Applicants from the Round 1 that were not funded are now being considered for awards from an additional $3.8 million in county ARPA funds recently received by the City of Holyoke.
City of Holyoke Seeks Statements of Interest on the Next Phase of COVID-19 Recovery
The first disbursements of local ARPA funds were made in Fall 2021 and addressed critical public health concerns and immediate recovery needs. Over the last year, the Mayor and city departments have been gathering information and strategizing on future recovery activities and ARPA allocations. To date, the City has completed a Community Survey with nearly 700 responses and a Business Survey to guide response and recovery,