Mustang receives $2.8M for municipal water and sewer projects
Commissioner David Anderson listens intently during discussion of the ARPA funding awarded as part of the Board of County Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, May 30. (Photo by Jacob Sturm)
By Jacob Sturm
news@mustangpaper.com
Representatives from different cities in Canadian County were in attendance as County Commissioners David Anderson, Tracey Rider and Tomas Manske discussed awarding American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to county municipalities Tuesday morning.
Once the meeting concluded, Mustang and three other cities had a large share of distributed funding to utilize.
The money awarded is intended to go toward water and sewer projects for the cities. After discussion in the past few weeks, the commissioners made that decision according to Anderson.
“Several weeks ago, we decided to allocate a percentage of our available money to these type of projects (with) the sewer and the water,” Anderson said.
In the past, commissioners had approved allocating $10,248,411 to the category.
Tommy Humphries, the assistant district attorney for Canadian County, said he talked with each commissioner individually and recommended the county use a formula approach during the meeting.
He said he took just under 76% of cities have received in ARPA funds and worked with that to figure the amount for each municipality.
Rider, Manske and Anderson elected to award the four largest municipalities in the county and held off on awarding the allotted money to Union City and Calumet until Humphries has the time to work through the process with those municipalities.
“Visiting with you all (commissioners), I know some priorities are that this money that’s given to those municipalities, we would like to see it spent in category five,” Humphries said. “So, that’s all water and sewer projects that’s allowed under ARPA.”
Anderson read the total funding allocated to each municipality, with Mustang receiving $2,802,612 of the ARPA funding from the county.
El Reno received $2,438,044, while Yukon received $3,725,438 and Piedmont took $1,040,536.
The County action made the funds available to the four cities immediately and received unanimous consent once discussion concluded.
