A storm siren located in Johnson County is seen in October 2017. Daily Journal File Photo
Greenwood officials are asking the city council to allocate federal relief funds to purchase two new storm sirens and improve cybersecurity.
The Greenwood City Council will hold a public hearing Monday night on an ordinance that would approve using $95,000 in funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, to fund the purchases. ARPA is a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package that delivered direct financial relief to Americans and distributed billions to states to respond to the pandemic and to give to cities, towns and counties.
After having multiple tornadoes strike Johnson County in the last six months, officials want to make sure the public has plenty of ways to hear the warnings — including outdoor storm sirens. Some Greenwood neighborhoods are now outside the radius of being able to hear the sirens — something that needs to be fixed, said Brad Coy, assistant fire chief.
“From a public safety standpoint, we want to try to keep up and provide sirens to those areas if we can,” Coy said.
The two new outdoor storm sirens, which will cost $69,000 total, would be placed in far southwest and far southeast Greenwood, respectively. Exact locations are pending as the fire department is working with other city departments and neighborhoods on where to place them, along with adding utilities, he said.
To fund the new sirens, the fire department has been working with the mayor’s office and the controller’s office, as they are not something the fire department typically budgets for each year, Coy said. After discussion officials settled on using ARPA funding.
Rob Kolb, the city’s director of information technology, is requesting $26,000 to help improve the city’s cyber security system. The money would be used to purchase security cameras, servers and a firewall system, according to city documents.
In total, the city of Greenwood received $6,616,647 in ARPA funds. Officials have spent or planned to spend about half of it — $3,240,271 — as of last week. This includes the planned expenditures before the city council, said Greg Wright, city controller.
If the ordinance is passed, then the city will still have $3,376,376 in ARPA funds that can be allocated for approved uses, he said. Those could include responding to COVID-19, negative economic impacts of COVID-19, off-setting lost government revenue, and capital improvement projects such as upgrading water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.
The remaining ARPA funds are required to be allocated by December 31, 2024, and completely spent by December 31, 2026, Wright said.
So far, ARPA funds have paid for school security; premium pay for employees; additional costs for fire apparatus; security cameras for the airport, the police training center and the parking garage at The Madison; cybersecurity consultant services; a respirator fit tester for the fire department; an emergency radio booster at the Greenwood Park Mall; and a backup generator, fencing and air purification system for the city center. If approved, the storm sirens and the servers would be added to this list, according to data provided by Wright.
Along with allocating ARPA funds, the ordinance will address other funding needs.
Officials are requesting an additional appropriation of $135,000 to cover the city’s “proportionate cost” from the May municipal primary, along with the city’s anticipated share of the costs from the November municipal election. The city’s IT department has also recommended extending a cybersecurity software services agreement that was initially funded in mid-2022. The $45,000 extension would go to the end of 2023, according to city documents.
These requests would be funded separately from ARPA funding. Officials ask in the ordinance to use $180,000 from the cigarette tax fund to cover these costs, city documents show.
After Monday’s hearing, a final vote on the ordinance could possibly take place next month. It could also be expedited by the city council if needed.
