Guilford County formally accepted $52 million of its $104 million of ARPA funding in July 2021.  Since then, the County has:

• Held several community ARPA feedback sessions;
• started an analysis of the pandemic’s impact on our local economy and workforce;
• and initiated a broadband infrastructure, gaps, and action plan assessment. 

These efforts are part of the first phase of our community engagement work to hear from our residents about the impacts that the pandemic has had and is still having on our community. 

ARPA funding represents one of several funding streams made available to the County to address pandemic impacts.  While the County continues to work through the ARPA community engagement process, the County has been busy with other pandemic-related responses including holding vaccination clinics, contact tracing and disease mitigation, and administering the Emergency Rental Assistance and eviction diversion programs.

The County is conducting community engagement to gather public input on how the bulk of the ARPA funds should be used to support long-term recovery from the pandemic. This community engagement will conclude in late winter 2021. This information will be used to help inform funding priorities for Guilford County, along with the additional guidance from the federal government about allowable uses.  These funding priorities will then be used to identify areas most suitable for ARPA funding.

County Commissioners will make the final decision on how the funds will be allocated, considering feedback from community engagement sessions, existing county and community programming, federal ARPA guidelines and monitoring requirements, and the availability of other funding sources. This decision will be made in late spring or early summer 2022 in conjunction with the County’s budget process.

The County intends to offer two opportunities for partners to help address community needs. The first opportunity will focus on collaborative proposals for projects to assist the community with near-term growth, recovery and response to COVID-19 and its negative public health and economic impacts, particularly in our Qualified Census Tracts. A near-term project is being defined as one that can be ready to deploy no later than April 1, 2022 with a completion date of no later than December 31, 2023.  We expect to open a Request for Near-Term Ideas by mid-December 2021.

The second opportunity will focus on collaborative proposals that assist the community with long-term growth and recovery. These are likely to be projects with broader community impact that build long-term community resiliency. As such, they will also require more comprehensive collaboration across community partners and health and economic systems.  The nature of these projects will be informed by the community engagement work going on now.  These projects will have completion dates of no later than December 31, 2026. More information will be provided on the Guilford County ARPA website.

The Community Conversations in September and October 2021 captured the initial thoughts and experiences of Guilford County residents. In Phase 2: Visioning, we are gathering more specific information about how the ARPA funds should be allocated. In Phase 3: Prioritizing, we will ask for feedback to narrow down residents’ top priorities for the funds. Each step in the process helps us make sure that the funds are used in the most effective and appropriate way.