Looking back, and ahead.

This past Tuesday was a culmination of a dedicated campaign to communicate with Holland City residents about what we’ve been able to achieve these past two years on the Board, and my goals for the next two, if granted that privilege. I am thankful that Holland City once again have placed their trust in me for the upcoming two years. It is definitely not a privilege that I take lightly.

Going forward, we still have nearly two months left in this current term. The most important item that we need to finish is the process of allocating American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. Ottawa County was allocated a little over $57M through the American Rescue Plan. Since then, we have made appropriations of $11.75M. The allocations have been approximately $5.5M for staff loyalty and Inflation Impact payments. We have allocated $2M for a locally-run Eviction Prevention fund as well as $3.5M for two affordable housing projects, one in Holland and the other in Grand Haven. The remaining funds have been used to hire ‘Bucket Fund’ managers as well as begin work on the County-wide Broadband project.

That means we have a little over $45M left in ARPA funds. On Tuesday, November 15, we will begin seeing a number of projects that have been recommended by our ARPA Task Force. We will also see a few projects centered around County-specific initiatives that have come to us through an internal process. My hope, as it has been since we began with the ARPA process, is that these funds accomplish two main goals:

1.) Work to engage and fund community projects as much as possible. These funds were entrusted to us on a per-capita basis, and as such, they are by and large community funds. Our allocations should reflect that to the greatest extent possible.

2.) The projects that we select should be unique, transformational projects that we would not engage in absent the ARPA funds being entrusted to us. I do not believe we should be using these funds to be accomplishing things that we would be or otherwise are carrying out.

Likewise, this Tuesday we will continue discussions on extending Severance protections to all non-elected department heads. Over the past few months, we have extended those protections to the Director of the Health Department, Lisa Stefasnovski, as well as to the head of the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. I believe, at a minimum, we should extend that protection to all department heads. Recruiting and retaining high quality candidates is important to our goal of offering high quality services to our residents, and this will simply be one more benefit that we can offer to help us carry out that important goal.

Finally, as member of the Talent and Recruitment Committee, it is important that we close out the year with as many boards and commissions vacancies filled as possible, so that they can begin the new year as ready and able to complete their important work as possible.

I would like once again to thank the City of Holland residents for their confidence and if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out at 616 443-4281 or dzylstra@miottawa.org.