Cameron Levasseur / BDN Composite; Documents courtesy of Aroostook County
By the end of 2026, all of the $1.5 billion allocated as state and local recovery funds in Maine under the American Rescue Plan Act must be spent. So for hundreds of projects throughout the state that are supported by the sweeping 2021 federal stimulus package — including 91 funded by Aroostook County — the countdown is on.
The U.S. Treasury delegated $261 million to Maine’s counties, of which Aroostook received just over $13 million, sixth-most among the counties.
The remainder of that $1.5 billion went to the state and local governments. Of that, $240 million was directly awarded to the towns and cities, while the state itself received about $1 billion in discretionary funds that it invested in the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan.
Documents provided by Aroostook County and an interview with ARPA Administrator Steve Pelletier offer a clear picture into how the county spent its windfall and how projects stand as the program’s spending deadline comes into view.
The county allocated its money in two ways. Roughly 55% of its funds, or $7.12 million, went to directly supporting projects overseen by the county. It awarded the remaining 45%, which totaled more than $5.9 million, to municipalities and nonprofits through a “competitive grant process.”
In total, 41 county projects received ARPA funding, as did 17 municipalities, 11 nonprofits, three ambulance services, three municipal districts and one tribe. Several municipalities, nonprofits, ambulance services and districts received multiple grants.
Eligible uses for the funds, which were largely designed to help the U.S. respond to the economic and health turmoil created by the COVID-19 pandemic, can be broadly classified into two categories: public health and public infrastructure.
That included supporting nonprofits and government services that saw a reduction in revenue as a result of the pandemic, providing premium pay to essential workers and funding necessary investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.
Certain other projects, including those for emergency natural disaster relief and community housing and development, were also eligible.
This graphic depicts where the county directly allocated more than half of its ARPA funds:
The county’s single biggest expense with the funds was $3.38 million used to upgrade the sheriff’s department’s radio communications system.
Specifically, that meant adding 15 new radio repeaters to existing towers around the county to replace aging infrastructure and eliminate dead areas.
“It was a repeater system with three repeaters around the county that was developed in the 1970s and they hadn’t really done any upgrades to it,” Pelletier said. “When some issues happened, the equipment was so antiquated that they weren’t even able to replace it.”
And while the cost was covered by the county, the new system will upgrade communications for emergency services in municipalities as well.
“Even the fire departments within each municipality are going to get much safer and much better access to communicate with each other,” Pelletier said.
The second biggest expense, totaling $1.36 million, is for a combination of administration and compliance costs associated with ARPA itself.
A portion of that figure, listed as $500,000 in the county’s ARPA program statement, covers Pelletier’s salary and benefits for the four years he will serve in the role, along with other associated expenses supporting his position and the grant program.
Another $600,000 was earmarked for pandemic-related revenue loss for the county.
The rest is being used, Pelletier said, to cover costs for reporting and audits mandated by the federal government to ensure the funds are spent as they were intended.
“Sometimes when you receive county or federal funds, after a certain amount, it triggers a larger audit, which is quite costly for us,” Pelletier said. “So that’s all included in this.”
Specifically, that number is now $1 million, a threshold that increased from $750,000 in 2024. Any non-federal entity that spends over $1 million in federal grant funding in a fiscal year is subject to what is known as a single audit, a rigorous and costly federal compliance effort.
Other major county expenses include more than $405,000 in essential worker stipends for county employees and a roof replacement at the Aroostook County Superior & District Court in Houlton that cost nearly $350,000.
Municipal and non-profit grants
In late 2021, the county, led by Pelletier — the former planning and economic development director of Fort Kent — began to design a grant process for nearly half of its $13 million allocation.
They decided that municipalities and organizations applying for public infrastructure grants could request up to a maximum of $300,000, and that public health grants could go as high as $150,000. Negative economic impact grants — those designed to make up revenue loss during the pandemic — could not exceed 100,000, or 75% of a project’s cost.
Each award also required the grantee to match a certain portion of the funds they received. Public health and negative economic impact grants needed a 25% match. Public infrastructure and natural disaster relief grants required a 100% match. That caveat, Pelletier said, helped generate more than $16 million matching funds and subsequent community investment.
By the spring of the following year, the program opened to applications. By mid-June, Pelletier had whittled 21 or 22 applications down to 15 initial grant recipients.
Those grants ranged from large — $300,000 to support clean water projects in Presque Isle and Fort Kent — to small: $33,332 to the Central Aroostook Ambulance Service for emergency equipment. They set the stage for the next two years of grant processes.
The county judged applications using a 100-point rubric based on questions about the grant’s projected impact, development strategy and citizen participation.
Applicants who agreed to match funds beyond the minimum percentage were given bonus points up to a max of five. Projects that would create or retain jobs earned bonus points for each job up to three. Those who were denied a grant in a previous year were awarded five bonus points. Those who received a grant in a previous year had points subtracted from their total.
“Our hope going into this, with the commissioners and the county administrator and myself, was that we would have liked to have seen the money dispersed across the county … to big communities, small communities, nonprofits. ” Pelletier said. “With a competitive grant process that’s pretty hard to predict, but I think the projects reflect that’s actually what happened, from St. Francis to Houlton.”
Most of the projects the county awarded grants for in 2022 and 2023 have been completed. Pelletier estimates that roughly 60% of projects from the 2024 process are complete. Grant recipients have until the end of 2026 to finish.
Click between pages below or use the search function to see every ARPA grant Aroostook awarded to municipalities, non profits and other organizations during the life of the program:
