The School of Government now has free online resources to help you meet the reporting and compliance requirements that come with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding. If your local government has received ARRA funding, I strongly encourage you to take a look at these resources before October 1st (yes, that’s this Thursday), when the initial reporting period begins. If your local government has not yet received ARRA funding, but expects to receive ARRA funding at some point, I encourage you to review these resources as soon as possible.
April 2010 update: We’ve moved these resources to a new ARRA website, which you can find here.
You can find these resources, which I’ll describe below, on the SOG’s Local Government Purchasing and Contracting website. Click on the “ARRA” link in the menu on the left-hand side of the page.
So, what’s on the website? Four items (so far): (1) slides and (2) recordings from our ARRA webinar on Tuesday, (3) questions and answers from the webinar (coming soon), and (4) a written guide to ARRA funding.
Webinar Slides and Recording
We held our Stimulus Funding webinar last Tuesday, and reached our cap of 300 participants. For those of you who were unable to register for the webinar (or for those of you who were, but need a refresher), you can now listen to the presentation portion of the webinar for free, split into three parts. We had planned to make the recorded version of the entire webinar available, but the webinar was disrupted by a few technical difficulties caused by a computer virus, so we decided to re-record the presentation portion—not the Q&A—instead. You can access these recordings on the ARRA webpage. You can also download a copy of the slides.
Webinar Questions and Answers
As for the questions we received during the webinar, we were able to save those questions, and the webinar panelists (Jimmy Carter from the North Carolina Office of Economic Recovery and Investment, Sharon Edmundson from the Local Government Commission, John Leaston from the North Carolina Office of Economic Recovery and Investment, Brenda Mills from the City of Asheville, Rebecca Troutman from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, and Erin Wynia from the North Carolina League of Municipalities) and I are working on answering those questions. Once I’ve compiled our answers, the questions and answers will also be available on the ARRA webpage.
Written Guide to ARRA Funding
As I mentioned in my September 1st blog post, the School of Government, the North Carolina Office of Economic Recovery and Investment, the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer, the North Carolina League of Municipalities, and the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners was working on developing a guide for compliance with ARRA funding requirements. This Guide to American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Funding for North Carolina Local Governments is now available, and you can find it on the ARRA webpage. This Guide is full of hyperlinks to other websites and resources, so it will be of limited use if you simply print it out. I suggest downloading it and using it on your computer so you can link directly to the resources referenced throughout the Guide.
(Please note that the Guide states that the next reporting period—after the initial October 1st through October 10th reporting period—is February 1, 2010 through February 10, 2010. That is incorrect: the next reporting period will be January 1, 2010 through January 10, 2010.)
Coming Soon
We are planning on developing a more robust ARRA website soon, with links to additional resources. Once that website is up and running, you’ll be able to link to it through the ARRA webpage.
Questions
If you have questions about ARRA funding and reporting requirements, you can contact any of the webinar panelists (contact information for the panelists can be found on the webinar slides [pdf]). Of course, the best source of information about a specific ARRA grant (or other ARRA funding mechanism) is the agency that provided you with that funding. Do not hesitate to direct questions to that agency—but I recommend emailing them instead of calling, so you get a written response that you can place in your bid file or project file.