HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council officially passed its ARPA allocations as part of its meeting Tuesday, with the first domino to fall that of selecting a consultant to help navigate the process.
The council ultimately decided to use iParametrics out of Georgia, rather than the Hutchinson Community Foundation, as their proposal was $32,700 less expensive at $125,000 and they appear to provide resources that Hutchinson Community Foundation ultimately could not. Aubrey Abbott Patterson with the Community Foundation spoke to the council Tuesday.
"Looking at iParametrics proposal, I was blown away by who they are, what they provide, their experience, their expertise and what they know about ARPA," Patterson said. "I do think that the layering of funding is really important. We had talked about what we could provide there and who we know. Our idea was SCKEDD. They are really good at knowing how to layer programs and that we might be able to partner with them to do that, but iParametrics knows that. They can layer that funding and better than we can. We just don't have enough of that in house to do it easily. Certainly, our community wants to bring as much resources as we can back to Reno County and if another entity can do that, that's what we want to lean toward."
The council officially will spend $ 2,333,266.91 on mill and overlay work for the Woodie Seat Freeway, $440,000 on fire department projects and $308,140.77 on the Housing Commission for the city's half of the funds. City Manager Gary Meagher made clear that staff did their due diligence to be sure that iParametrics will be responsive to the city if they have questions.
"Angela (Richard, Finance Director) will have a lot of contact with them," Meagher said. "I did ask the other counties that I contacted, because I know, sometimes when you have a large firm, you can kind of get lost. They did say they were very responsive to those counties. Some of the counties are small counties, such as Seward County and Finney County. They felt like they got good communication and good service."
The community portion of the allocation will put $1,773,844.61 toward childcare, $591,281.54 toward economic development and small business projects and $591,281.54 toward housing. The overall allocation is $6,162,815.36.