Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Sheridan City Council held a study session on September 28, 2026, at 5:30 PM. The meeting covered six agenda items: distribution of American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) interest earnings, a professional services agreement for a municipal court prosecuting attorney, the final plat of Blacktooth Business Park, a bid award for the Fifth and Main curb reconstruction project, and a brief update on the citizen academy. No formal votes were taken; discussions were held to provide staff with direction for future action.
And to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and justice for all. Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the September 28th, 2026 study session. Uh it's 5.30, so we'll get started. We have a list of six items, uh, so we'll just jump in. Our first one is uh discussion of the distribution of the American Recovery Plan Act funds, and with us is our city treasurer Darla Hawkins. Welcome, Darla. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Council. All right, yeah. So tonight I'd like to start that conversation in regards to the interest that we received back from the county. If you guys recall a few years back, we when we were receiving the ARPA funding, the city designated a portion of that money to go to the housing land trust project. While that money was used for that project, um it did earn interest in the amount of $70,700. The interest earnings are not restricted to any particular project or priority. The money could be considered for a different housing uh related project such as the Habitat for Humanity, it could also be considered for another organization or just any other city priority. It could also just be retained in the general fund for future needs. Um as my department starts gearing up for budget revision, uh we if we do plan to utilize these funds, we will need to have uh clear direction on how we want to spend that. So that is what we'd like to discuss tonight. So, in order to back, I'll back this up. Uh just reporting the essence of it. Um, what happened was I received a call from uh Miss Sopco with the uh Habitat for Humanities, and they requested those funds so they could put those back into their projects for all their housing land trust funds projects that they have going. And so this was just a it would be a good boost for that program to keep it working the way it's supposed to work, and so that's what it was brought before me, and that's why I'm bringing it before you guys today. And then Friday, I'm gonna actually meet Bev and I are gonna actually meet with Miss Sopco and I just drew a blank on her name. Christine Christine, Christine Dietrich, thank you. And so we can get further we can get further clarifications on that, uh, what they propose to do with that. But uh in essence, that's what they want to use. They want to use that money money to continue with their housing interest programs. So go ahead, Steve. Yeah, my only concern would be that the way it seems to have developed, we've almost somewhat thought that's the direction we're going to go because there was a discussion already had it before the council heard about it. So that kind of concerns me a little bit. Um again, this is probably windfall money that wasn't budgeted as income. The people that are looking at possibly having it have already got funding through the city already. So again, I don't say it's not a good organization. I think it is. But I also think when you get a windfolding of money, we don't say, okay, let's go find somewhere to put it right away. I do believe we are going to look at some tough times, especially with proposition uh coming on the on the ballot. I do believe we're going to see some uh decline in revenue. So I would almost want to see this hold that money for a while to see what's going to happen down the road. But again, I know the money's interest on ARPA money, but I don't want to look too far too quickly before the council digests there's money before we start meeting with people already. That I think might have been a little bit putting the cart before the horse. And to be clear, Steve, I I didn't meet with anybody, and then we would probably meet Friday to the first time.