Editor’s note: Over the next several weeks, The Smithfield Times will publish an overview of how each locality in our coverage area spent its allotted American Rescue Plan Act funds, which must be allocated by Dec. 31 of this year and spent by the end of 2026.

A new water main serving Hardy Elementary School a mile outside Smithfield has something in common with the lights illuminating the football field at Smithfield’s Luter Sports Complex.

Both projects were funded with federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, as the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 pandemic relief package Congress passed in 2021 has become known.

Local governments, including Isle of Wight County and its two towns, each received millions of dollars from ARPA in 2022. Each has until Dec. 31 to obligate any remaining funds and through the end of 2026 to spend them.

The Smithfield Times, based on public records and email interviews, has compiled an overview of how Isle of Wight County, its school system, and the towns of Smithfield and Windsor spent their ARPA allocations and what remains available to date.

 

Smithfield

Allocated: $8.7 million

Unspent: $928,000

 

ARPA included $19.5 billion in aid to localities with populations under 50,000, of which Smithfield received $8.7 million. Smithfield used the lion’s share to fund costly one-time infrastructure expenses.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, in a 2021 rule governing how governing how municipalities are to report their spending of ARPA funds, set a threshold of $10 million as the maximum localities could claim as “revenue loss,” or the amount of money they expected to lose as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because Smithfield received less than $10 million, it was able to claim its entire $8.7 million allotment as the “standard allowance” rather than having to itemize its individual uses in its reports to the federal government, according to Town Manager Michael Stallings. The rule allows money claimed as revenue loss to be used for the providing of nearly any government service.

By July 11, Smithfield had committed $7.8 million, leaving just over $928,000 available.

 

Water infrastructure

The largest share of the town’s ARPA funds, at just over $3 million, went to water infrastructure upgrades, including $800,000 Smithfield’s Town Council voted to contribute in December 2021 to the extension of the town’s North Church Street water main to serve the new Hardy Elementary that opened in 2023. The total also includes $500,000 to add a second skid, which removes contaminants from drinking water, at the town’s South Church Street reverse osmosis treatment plant. Only $83,195 had been spent as of April on the skid project, according to a spreadsheet shared with council members that month.

Two of the town’s ARPA-funded water projects – a $450,000 rehabilitation of the water tower on Wilson Road and the $100,000 replacement of a water main on Sykes Court – were each projected to come in more than $40,000 over budget. The Wilson Road tower is now complete at a listed cost of $494,631.

Just over $2.1 million, or 71%, of the town’s ARPA funds allocated for water projects had been spent by April, leaving just over $747,000 to complete the in-progress skid project and three then-unstarted water main replacements, including Sykes Court.

Sewer and stormwater projects accounted for another $2 million. Out of 21 listed ARPA-funded sewer projects, 10 totaling just over $656,000 were listed as having been completed as of April at roughly $100,000 under budget collectively.  By the same month, the town had spent just over $210,000 out of another $1.5 million allocated for in-progress and unstarted sewer and stormwater projects.

 

Parks and Recreation

Another $1.9 million went to the town’s Parks and Recreation Department for 15 separate projects, just over half of which has been allocated to 11 projects already complete.

In 2022, the Town Council committed up to $315,000 for football field lights at the Luter Sports Complex, which prior to the April 5 vote that year had been slated for taxpayer funding in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

The lights were installed by October 2022, $43,900 under budget at a cost of $271,100. The work was also partially funded with a $20,000 grant Smithfield Packers Youth Sports, which administers the football program, had received from the project vendor, Musco Lights.

The April 5, 2022, vote had allocated additional funds for a concession stand and bathrooms serving the football field, and for a nearly 4,000-square-foot brick building at the Luter Sports Complex that would house maintenance equipment for three town-owned parks. The council had planned to use $445,000 in ARPA funds for the building’s construction, but reallocated the money to the concession stand in 2023 after the maintenance building’s cost estimate soared to over $1 million. The town of Windsor, 15 miles south of Smithfield, built an identical metal structure for $620,000 in 2020 before COVID-19 pandemic-linked supply chain disruptions sent construction costs skyrocketing.

In May of this year, the council voted to commit an additional $251,790 in ARPA funds toward the concession stand and award the job to Athens Building Corp., which was the lowest of six bidders at $696,790 including a 10% budgeted contingency. The 600-square-foot concession stand will be housed in a two-story building with bathrooms on the first floor and the second housing conference space for Smithfield Packers Youth Sports.

The council has authorized an additional $310,486 in ARPA funds for the rebuilding of footbridges and piers at the 208-acre Windsor Castle Park in the center of town, an underway job the town also awarded to Athens. ARPA funds also paid for several smaller projects.

These include $38,000 for the demolition of a gazebo at Clontz Park and its replacement with a new Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant pier, $40,000 for sidewalk repairs along Grace Street, $95,025 for paving at Clontz Park, $178,925 to repave a section of Jericho Road, $85,544 in repairs to the walking trails at Windsor Castle Park, $9,000 for automatic sliding doors at The Smithfield Center and $86,978 in repairs to the center’s deck overlooking the Pagan River.

 

Tourism

Smithfield had spent just over $138,000 as of April on initiatives by the tourism department it shares with Isle of Wight County, the largest of which was the 2023 rebuilding of the Main Street Square stage in front of The Smithfield Times office.

The new 37-foot-wide stage, which made its debut at last year’s Smithfield Arts Festival in May, includes a wheelchair lift and replaced a 23-foot-wide gazebo-style stage dating to 1997. The town had originally allotted $109,143 in ARPA funds for the project but ended up spending $122,435, or just over $13,000 over budget, for renovations that included rebranding the lawn outside the Times office, affectionately known for decades as Smithfield’s “Times Square,” as “Main Street Square.”

The council initially allotted $15,000 to the stage, but committed additional funds as the project’s scope grew and costs ballooned. The site serves as host to an annual summer concert series begun by Times Publisher Emeritus John Edwards and his wife, Anne, in 1987, and continues to this day under the umbrella of the Isle of Wight Arts League.

The town’s tourism-related ARPA allocations also included $8,882 for directional signage and $6,798 for public benches.