CARES Act Funding: Eligible Uses, Tracking and Reporting

7:08PM Oct 7, 2021

Speakers:

Keywords:

funds

afm

expenditures

public health emergency

act

treasury

grants

community

public health

cares

questions

expenses

reporting

payroll

alaska

businesses

allowable

provide

period

guidance

Hello everyone and welcome to our Cares Act workshop has been hosted by AFM and also news with NASCAR Mr Lee and his family had a honor to serve as one of vice presidents of AFM, as well welcome you all here today. Before I head off to Niels, I'm going to ask that our pistons Please mute their device unless you have a question. And also we do know that we do have some members that are in rural Alaska, and whose bandwidth may be limited if that is so we ask that you please turn your camera off unless you have a question. That way we aren't constraining those participants are do have a limited broadband. With this connection. So with that said, that's why I say again thank you for being here this is part of our AFM navigator program. Um, we do have a limited time today so I'm gonna head off to Neil's to introduce themselves and start the workshop. So again, thank you and welcome, and thank you for being here knows.

Yeah Thanks Ben and welcome everyone. My name is Nils Andres and I'm the Executive Director of the Alaska Municipal League. And over the last, I guess 18 months at this point we've been supporting local governments through their Cares Act, processes, and really in a good position, I think I hope to be able to cover some of you know where we're at with the Cares Act, and where you might be at and to answer questions and provide additional information so I've shared by sprain and have, I'll just say have made this slideshow probably more text heavy than I normally would. But we'll share this afterward with anybody who wants it and hopefully it will be a good resource. And in a lot of ways it takes, you know what used to be eight pages of character guidance and 38 pages of FAQs and what's now a 13 page. Federal Register and distills it into a slideshow that hopefully calls out all the pertinent points that are helpful for you and thinking about how you can ramp up your Cares Act spending in ways that are eligible and appropriate. And again I want to thank Sarah Peterson and Ben a lot and AFM for this navigator program and anything we can do to make sure it's successful, and that Alaska is tribal governments and Alaska Native corporations that everyone is successful in their approach to this federal relief program. I will turn off my video, consistent with what Ben suggested, but hopefully you can see my slides. The. You can still see my slides there.

Yes we can. Thank you. Yep.

Perfect. So just. And for those of you who have, you have been working with carrier SEC for a while a lot of this is going to be a refresher, hopefully, feel free along the way to put questions in the chat bar, I'll try to answer them along the way, or at the end. And I'm not going to read through everything but I do want to reinforce a few things on each slide so I think there's three main components to to the Cares Act guidance that's out there one that any expenditure of Cares Act funding needs to be tied back to the public health emergency in some way. So it's directly related to public health, but also just kind of the primary impact of COVID-19. And then there's secondary impacts things like economic downturn that you all also the entire expenditures too but it has to be related to this, this public health emergency. And by this public health emergency what Treasury has said is that the covered period is from March of 2020 through December 30 of 2021. And for all of us scrambling last year to try to get things done by December 30 2020 It's great to have had that extension but at this point we're just a couple months away from the end of the coverage, period. And no matter when you receive your federal leave your federal assistance money through the Cares Act or the Coronavirus belief on the cover periods that covered period so you could have received it just a couple months ago and still you need to be looking back at expenditures from March through December of this year. And those expenditures need to be different than the budget that you had in place, as of March 27 2020 So that's the broad guidance that Treasury provided. They go on that really it's up to you to figure out what, what, what was necessary in response to the public health emergency. Treasury recognize that they're going to not, they're not going to know the individual circumstances of every direct recipient prime recipient of funding. And so they've left it up to government officials to determine what was reasonably necessary, and to use reasonable judgment for determining necessary as it relates to a public health emergency. And so a lot of cities and boroughs and the state, and, and a lot of folks who received funds have struggled under this because we're used to waiting for kind of a here's what's allowable under federal law, list, and they've got that to some extent but it's also left a lot up to interpretation. For recipients of these funds, and there's a lot more that goes into the guidance and your we wrestled for a long time with. When was it when was an expense incurred. And, and what Treasury has said now is that so we've talked about the covered period from March 2020 through December, 2021, a cost needs to have been incurred. Within that period so performance or delivery must have occurred within that covered period, payment can occur outside of that covered period so if you do something in the next couple months. Have a good delivered or service provided but actually make a payment. After the end of the year, you still have time to count that as part of your fares act expenditures, and they've said that kind of 90 days seems reasonable for actual payment. And really, the purpose of any good or service provided during the covered period, needs to have some benefit within the covered period so you need to use an asset or have a service provided that actually can benefit your community, your residents or citizens, as part of the

as part of the public health emergency. Again, I mentioned expenditures are tied to primary impacts Treasury does provide a list of what those look like so very directly it's medical expenses, and those don't have to be your medical expenses they can be. You can think about what your clinic, or other health systems in place have been taking up what hospitals in your community have undertaken. It can your funds can help to alleviate any expenses that they hadn't planned for. During this time, but it also extends into any testing that you've conducted any vaccination efforts that you've conducted. It applies to telemedicine and emergency medical transportation. So these are kind of direct expenses that you might have experienced during the public health emergency. And more broadly, you've got the public health expenses so you've got anything that you've done that's communicated out to people in your community what needs to happen based on, you know, maybe you've got travel restrictions or you ask people to stay at home, that that communication or enforcement or anything that relates to that compliance or state or federal compliance all of that falls under eligibility for public health expenses, and any ppb, that you provided counts disinfecting your facilities your offices all counts and expenses for technical assistance. So if you've hired legal counsel or a public health official or AFM or you know, whoever it is to help you through this process. Those are eligible expenditures that you could pay for out of Your FERS Act funds. And at the same time, there's a number of other things that could be counted under public health. And one of the more important provisions of the Cares Act expenditures was related to payroll, and essentially for any public safety, public health, healthcare Human Services, employees that you employ. And that are substantially dedicated to medic, to being involved in this public health emergency. You can presume that the entirety of their payroll should be covered by Cares Act fund so, or that it was that it means that substantially dedicated provision, and if they weren't public health or public safety, but still had a role, maybe they were an incident commander or emergency response or helped with public health or however that was you. You just need to track the hours that they worked on the public health emergency and you can use cares at Coronavirus relief funds to pay for them. And that's since March of last year, so it really is this 21 month period that we're talking about. It's not just looking forward even though we've got December 31 in front of us. So, be tracking your, your payroll. I don't know what these expenditures might look like for you I guess I know tribal police officers, if you have a TPO, it would cover the entirety of their payroll for that period. If you've got a clinic and a public health nurse or somebody in that space, it will apply to the entirety of their salary and benefits over this period. So be thinking about what payroll looks like to you and if you haven't been counting, kind of, hours, accordingly you can be thinking about it, a portion of their payrolls at 10% of their time has been dedicated to the public health emergency, And think about how to apply CRF funds to

to that payroll. Keep in mind that when it comes to administrative costs, you're, you're not allowed to use Cares Act funds for indirect costs so this these aren't grant funds this is other financial assistance. And so you can apply an eight or a 20 or whatever your indirect rate might be as you would to grant funds, but you can use these, a portion of the funds to apply to the administrative work necessary to respond to all the things that you stand up as part of your Cares Act implementation so if you had a grant program that push money out to businesses or to residents or if you worked on public health outreach or emergency response specifically, all the administrative work that's tied to any of those programs, which would count and you would just track time, as it relates to that. And then it's worth noting, I'll bring up the federal Single Audit Act. If you received more than $750,000 and Cares Act that triggers that requirement. Or if you have to do that anyways. You can use Karis AK funds to help with any of the pre audit and then actual audit work, either fully as a relates to care as act or as a portion of your, your overall audit that you might undertake, both for this year and for the coming. This is where it gets a little bit more creative. These are expenses to facilitate compliance. So, if there were, federal or state or local or tribal orders in place that changed how citizens behaved or businesses operated. You're able to apply your Cares Act funds in support of them, and actually none of those orders need to be in place, according to the Treasury guidance, and all of these are eligible expenditure so things like food delivery, I know of many communities who have supported subsistence activities during this time helping get food to elders, that kind of thing. as it relates to a more vulnerable populations that that's occurred, distance learning so helping if schools got laptops out to students and communities, whatever that looked like for you. Telework if employees and at the tribe are antsy When, when, work from home. All of those, all of those expenses would be eligible for carriers act to be applied to any extra leave that had to be taken because of COVID or because of compliance with public health precautions things like somebody had to isolate for 10 days or quarantine for seven days. If they had to take extra leave or it was as if it was leave outside of what you normally would have provided, that would be covered by by your CRF funds, And I'm using Cares Act and CRF interchangeably so Cara Zach was the law, the funds that that were appropriated for tribes and cities and, and the state it comes out of the Coronavirus relief fund so on the Treasury page it's CRF. That's the kind of technical term, maintaining, if you've got a community jail, things like that and social distancing or sanitation there, and then helping with homeless populations. Overcrowding housing situations, providing housing for somebody who needs quarantine. All of that falls into it. There's a question in the chat bar about payroll, and whether, even if it was accounted for your FY 20 budget, would, could you still presume, make some presumption around public safety or public health, employees and Yes is the answer. So you could have had, you know, your TPO or a public health or whatever that employee was in your FY 20 budget or 19 or whatever, wherever you're at,

and you would presume that in FY 21 and 22, that all of their costs would still be substantially dedicated to COVID response so it's an exception to the rule of what was accounted for in your FYI 20 budget. They don't need to be new positions. If they're not a public health or a public safety employee and they're administrative or you closed down bingo and then use those, or you know whatever it was and use those staff for hauling trash or serving elders or something that would be a new position that's redirected that, that you created that's responding to the public health emergency. And so even though they were budgeted for in your prior budgets for one thing you've repurpose them and you would count them as eligible for, for using your Cares Act dollars for. So those are all kind of primary impacts of COVID secondary impacts or more in relation to especially the economic side of suffering that might have been experienced by businesses or community members, and, and this is where it gets a little bit. I don't know, I would say messier, but, but what it basically asks you to do is stand up entirely new programs, and figure out how to get the relief dollars that you received into the hands of small businesses, as defined by you and others. And then it extends to nonprofits and basically any, any businesses that experienced business interruption or had closures, or if you're if the business has lost revenue in some way the lost revenue provision doesn't apply to businesses, you're really thinking about what's the difference we need to make for businesses in our community. And you can provide grants to those businesses that is taxable. Taxable revenue for them, but still it kind of keeps the lights on, over the last 2118 months or so. You, you could also provide things like the federal government right the payroll protection program you can offer something similar for businesses to keep employees employed and offer a payroll support program. I don't know that this that unemployment insurance applies to everybody. But that was an eligible expenditure. Under CRF. I just, I think we'll get to individual assistance later but just like there's food and housing programs and their support for businesses. You're also able to provide individual assistance to residents, but to anybody, individuals in your community or outside, who need it, And we'll talk more about how to assess and implement a program like that. There are some clear things that you can't spend qiaseq money for that things were covered by insurance or if, if they'll be reimbursed by a federal program you can't double dip or Wi Fi an expense to something that's going to be covered elsewhere. If there's an employee that yes you kept on during the pandemic, but they're not actually doing, they're not substantially dedicated or having any role in the public health emergency. It's not an open ended. You can't use Kazakh funds for, for those expenses. You can't just apply workforce, workforce bonuses or severance pay. Though you can offer, or you can use funds for hazard pay or overtime, as it relates to those employees who are a part of, or kind of significantly substantially dedicated to responding to the public health emergency. If you don't do things right the federal government, come back and ask for their money back. Is the, that's the liability that you carry. So if you haven't tracked appropriately if you're not reporting, if you're if you've spent funds inappropriately, you'll have a chance to correct your reports or to reclassify those expenditures. But, but, ultimately, department Treasury will will be responsible for recouping funds that that weren't appropriately spent Treasury has a long list of frequently asked questions. And, and this just kind of follows right through the Federal Register notice, but you're not asking Treasury or the federal government for permission.

You're not getting approval for the expenditure the tribal government or whoever the prime recipient is the responsible party for determining what was necessary. As an expenditure during the public health emergency, you can transfer funds to other units of government, other tribal governments, up and down funds to the state and local governments, and there's a process for doing that. Your, you don't have to worry about. You don't have to wait for using FEMA funds or other federal funds first. Just make sure you're not duplicating the use of funds. If there's a large expenditure, you could use Cares Act for half of it and ARPA funds for that. As long as the expenditure is allowable under both federal relief programs. If your workers comp coverage went up, then that different because of COVID And that difference is allowable and mentioned Reapers repurposed employees telework expenses. If you've got a process for recovering from the pandemic. And then that recovery planning process is allowable expenditure, you can get funds to public private hospitals and I would, I would imagine, the tribal health system is equally applicable there. I'm going fast mostly so that we can have questions at the end and do feel free to put questions in the chat bar. I noticed this extensive. You can help residents, enroll in government benefit programs if they got laid off, you can provide grants to individuals, if they're experiencing homelessness or eviction. As a result of the pandemic. You can't use so keep in mind that you can't use this for lost revenue yourself, right so if you experienced loss revenue within the tribal government or the prime recipient can't use this for lost revenue so what, what this tax obligation piece is trying to say you can't, if a property tax were due. Then you couldn't use Kazakh money to give property tax stipends to individuals to pay the property tax that, that you need to make up for, but it shouldn't be so applicable. In this situation, you can provide subsidy payments to utility account holders. So, instead of just, If you've got a water and sewer utility or electric utility or whatever that might look like for you. You can't just reimburse yourself for unpaid unmet payments by utility account holders you provide a subsidy payment to the utility account holder and then expect that they use that to pay back that that utility. And so they should be structured as brands capital projects, and that question comes up a lot and the guidance, basically says, in general, No, and I would kind of consider that a strong hint that this isn't an opportunity to build things, but they do allow for using Coronavirus Relief Fund dollars for temporary facilities so if you had to build a, or if you had to do kind of mobile quarantine or set up a quarantine station or how its facility. Those kinds of things that are directly tied back to the public health side of things are allowable. People have asked about prepayment and if you've already got a prepayment. If that's not outside your current expenditure policy then you can make pre payments on things. But again, at this point in, in the reporting cycle, you would still need to have a benefit of the prepayment of the service or good occurred during this covered period. So you want to make sure that you've got that in place even it extends in the future. And you can get grants out to businesses, and make sure that your, your grant system needs to be administratively feasible, and that applies both to the business grants and individual grants so you need to certify somehow that they've experienced loss, and that they've been impacted by the public health emergency in some way. But the system that you set up to do that doesn't need to be such,

you know that, that you can't really manage it right if you've got a small staff. It doesn't need to be a system that's overly complex you need to have your small staff be able to administer and get funds out in a way that makes sense during the pandemic. And if you need to add somebody to administer cares ACH payments or payments are just, you know, for whatever that relief program looks like. You're able to cover those costs of that program. You can make broadband improvements if it's, if you're trying to increase bandwidth due to the public health emergency, make solid waste of water and sewer improvements is called out specifically in the FA Q's you can't do things to prepare for future pandemics, even though it seems like this one's not going to end anytime soon. It's just the covered period even though we might think of COVID-19 as lasting beyond that. If you offer individual assistance if you're providing stipends or Grants to Individuals in your community or I've heard of like tribal citizens, tribal members whatever that looks like. It can't be a blanket gift, not everybody can get the same thing. Or at least they need to demonstrate to you to the prime recipient that they have that they need it, And they need it based on the public health emergency, and they can self certify to that so you can you can have a form that says, for them to sign off on you know we experienced some kind of economic impact from the pandemic, and you can use these funds for housing or food or for whatever that looks like but you need to somehow track that anybody you give money to needs it as a result of the public health emergency. And that you've got documentation to whatever extent is administratively feasible to track that. So that applies to businesses to individuals to nonprofits, you're responsible for those funds that you give out if it's a blanket. Everybody gets $500 in our community. Um, I would express some real concern that Treasury would look at look at that and say you didn't demonstrate that USS need as part of that effort. So, and cover administrative Lee this. Again, if you need if an employee at a quarantine or something you can give leave outside of your normal policy and have it come paid for from care tech dollars. And there's a question about whether assistance is taxable. I don't, I don't know that the IRS is super clear on this right now they say, Yes, I think they've just kind of provided input on businesses. I would still vote I've seen legal counsel argue that individual assistance comes under emergency funds and grants. And maybe shouldn't be taxable. But let's leave that for maybe a different day with legal counsel on. If you've got a school in your community and maxed out everybody does. You can presume that up to $500 per student is an eligible expenditure, and if the state didn't provide the school district with that money or the local government didn't, then you could talk to the school or the district or the RTA about providing that level of relief and you would just take the number of students you have in your community times $500 And the school doesn't have to track any of that, as long as it doesn't duplicate other funds that came in, based on that same presumption so this is same as the public health or the public safety presumption for your payroll you're making the same presumption for school districts. And it's limited to $500 per student, you could upgrade public health infrastructure we talked about water sewer folks need running water at a home level a community level, you can take that up. You couldn't have kept these funds if you've kept your care SEC funds and an interest bearing account, that's an allowable use but the interest that's accrued and it probably is not much at this point, and the interest that's accrued. You need to use it prior to December 31 of this year, and it has to be used consistent with Treasury guidance. So, you can earn something on it but you still need to use it within the cover period, and for the same purposes.

Similarly, you can keep assets that you purchased. If you purchased a building to serve as a quarantine or public health center or Emergency Response Center you can keep that asset if you sell it within the covered period, the proceeds would need to be used within the covered period for the same purposes. And then there's no guidance on what happens afterward. So I think the keeping those assets or is allowed. If you sell it after the covered period and there's no guidance on that. Check all your, your distributions to businesses, if they've received other federal assistance, it doesn't matter, you just need to still track whether they need it or not. Again these are grants, this is other financial assistance and in another session in coming weeks we'll talk about reporting requirements and the Federal Single Audit Act and some of the more specific accounting guidelines that are applicable, but we won't cover it right now. Just that you should be thinking about if you received 700 More than seven or $50,000 and Cares Act funds in FY 21, then you should be completing a federal single audit. At this point, and doing so that's cover, that's an allowable expenditure of your any remaining kiradech funds, and you're responsible at the end of day for how you use these funds and if you've sent it out to nonprofits to get out or others to distribute on your behalf or to write a program for you, then you're responsible for them. Being following guidance as well. So I'm going to switch gears a little bit because you're probably all familiar with that, and, and maybe you want to know how have Alaska communities, spent their funds so far and these are 15 I think there's one more category of might be the 15, reporting categories that are out there. And it's, I think that for tribal governments and agencies your prime recipient, so you should be reporting directly to Treasury through I think Grant Solutions. He should have been doing that quarterly. But these are the categories that you're, you're presenting on a reporting on. This is what it looked like for local governments in Alaska. and this is how funds have flowed and as you can see for local governments with public safety, dollars a large portion of what they received in Cares Act was used for that presumption of public safety, but the combined amount of all the economic support business aid economic support housing support all of that is really the, where the bulk of local government funding went, but it's, it's pretty mixed really I mean 44 million for for public health. Some food programs a lot the business aid. Distance Learning $15 million 30 million for medical expenditures. So that's what it's looked like for Alaska for these local governments and I don't know what that's looked like for you but maybe you find some kind of consistency and in how you've approached it. We do, we have some sense of how local governments have spent their plans, especially for those expenditures above $25,000. And I'll, I'll get out of this PowerPoint in a little bit and run through a list of what that's looked like for others but you can kind of see it's all over the board right it's commercial grade washer and dryers and it's heating oil and utility assistance. Food credits store credits at the at the store any assistance to elders and with community childcare assistance was was a big one. Some communities but ambulances are a, you know, a kind of emergency response vehicles. So it's really an interesting list of how local governments at least sort of approach this and we're gonna go through a longer list and answer questions about what, what you've spent money on and what you might want to the next few months. This will go out later, but again this CRF funding will, there's a long list of resources at US Treasury, and there's links to each of these.

And you can, you can take a look at those again if you haven't, again we'll go through recording and record retention are completely in a future session. There's my contact information and then, like I said we've been supporting local governments for the last 18 months and Lisa Fisher in our office store for gold belt here in Juneau, but as is on hand to help with accounting or financials or how you're tracking your expenditures and reporting. So any kind of financial questions you might have she might be a good resource. With that I will stop that PowerPoint and I'll just share. Like I said this spreadsheet, of how communities have recorded their Cares Act expenditures above $25,000. And you can barely see it, it really is pretty diverse I don't know if you can see that well but I'll read through some of our childcare assistance grants a different decontamination trailer a burn cage light lights are electricity for residents downpayment on a burn box. Emergency, emergency support for the clinic 11 bed, man camp to provide for, for folks coming in. Water and Sewer vouchers cost to set up a community testing facility, including buying a trailer air tanks for firefighters storage of COVID supplies. ATV for patient transport and in response, there was a burn ban because there weren't firefighters around so to have somebody take care of that. That's a small business emergency grants, around $25,000 Each for HC that was Kodiak, and skidsteer to help with sanitation and the recycling center. So these, I mean, as you can see a backhoe for water and sewer, these are kind of expected from local government responsibilities but it's a pretty long list and you can kind of look to this I can look to this and see how, here's how this might be applicable for other communities in the state. And so if you've got ideas about how you want to, need to spend any remaining Kazakh funds you have, you know there's a lot of work out there that's been done to think through that. And with that I'm happy to take questions or any, anything that that you're working on that make sense, jump in and we've got plenty of minutes to work through things that are still on your plate or questions you have or any more guidance I can provide. You can also put questions in the chat bar if that works for you. I'm off mute, and if I can answer questions. Maybe. Let me ask Sarah Have you, have you heard questions come in through the app and navigator program that you think might be relevant or that we should try to address.

Hi Niels, no I haven't heard anything with respect to Cares Act, And I think the biggest with the using by December 31 What, and when that final report is due, I guess that is a question that some folks have asked is, you know, what is that final report. But other than that, I haven't received anything in particular about pairs X funding, I think it's really useful, that that sheet that you provided though, to show all the different uses, so that if there are folks on the line that still have funds remaining are trying to figure out how to how to utilize them. I think that just helps with brainstorming.

Yeah. And, yeah, we can, there's some questions. We'll send we can make the slides available and I think that lists, Sarah, I can pull that out of the spreadsheet that we've got and kind of make it more presentable for folks and people can look to see what one of others done. And, and I think in terms of reporting and I understanding is that all prime recipients had quarterly reporting throughout and then a final reporting so everybody should have been doing quarterly reporting through I think Grant Solutions. And then, I think in terms of a final report if the covered period is through December 31 Then your final report. I haven't seen a date, but it should be the quarter after write that you will have time to reconcile your numbers and finalize things so I would imagine by March 31 I haven't seen anything that says,

let's see if I can. I just wanted to make a quick, quick announcement that we will be we will be having weekly trainings, starting today, and through the end of the year on Thursdays from 12 to one with, I think, on Thanksgiving week it'll be earlier in the week, and also prior to Christmas, but we will be having these ongoing so as we as we talk about Cares Act or as you get closer or, no, please check out the AFM webpage and then the navigator program. To register for the Cares Act funding ARPA funding grant writing basics upcoming funding opportunities, and so we will have these available as well as any other upcoming events so if Treasury holds any additional webinars or workshops, we'll make sure that those are posted there as well.

Yeah, I think I know that folks are interested in ARPA too and I know that's one of the upcoming webinars and we're trying to tackle this one first because it's closing out in just a few months, and somebody in the chat, provided a link and I'll add this to my slides. But there, there is an IRS draft document on for tribal governments, and it clarifies that COVID assistance to households is not taxable.

So I'll add that to the slides and thanks Sam for that. And I think that's right. That was our early understanding, too.

There's a question about can tribes, provide multiple forms of financial assistance, yearly, if the need is provided, depending on the status of COVID. There's no, I mean the only limitation on financial assistance is need during the cover, period. And so, how you do, how you address need is really up to you, it can be direct cash to a household or an individual based on them, indicating to you and certifying that they have experienced some impact some economic impact from the public health emergency, You can offer reimbursement for a medical expenses or travel or, you know, things like that that came up for a family in your community, you could offer water sewer vouchers or electric vouchers or a utility subsidy basically whatever combination of things you want to offer that makes sense, is up to you and it doesn't, it's not limited at all except that you want. Whoever's receiving that assistance to, to tell you that they need it in some way and that you can document that need. Yeah, but I mean I like fine tuning it in that way that you can tailor assistance to how people might need things because maybe not everybody just needs, or maybe not everybody needs the same utility payment, and maybe it's a food program or a housing. So really think about what the types of needs in your community might be. And then tailor your assistance to provide lots of options for residents to plug into.

I know we'll tackle ARPA in the future but there was a request to kind of share the Alaska ARPA site and just really quickly, If you're not familiar, yet with that site. Is this one it's Alaska arpa.org And I imagine that is front and center arepas front and center for you even as code stairs act is tailing off sort trying to provide as much as many resources to our recipients as possible, there's a page dedicated to tribal governments and we'll stay in touch with AFM about how to coordinate, providing resources to everybody on that. And there's also a Grants opportunities page there this is mostly. But it's tracking grants.gov grants, federal grants right now, and there's, There should be a place where it's another page somewhere where there's just for that are applicable just for tribes. So I'll get that I'll share that when we get to our but a future webinar, but this is useful in this state funds become available programs become available, and then we'll make that, that up there too, or we'll get that out there. So that's a good resource for those of you working on that. Working on art but no that's. I know that's top of mind for many,

and nails to add on to nails so AFM and Alaska municipally have been working very closely and AFM is the process of developing a website is as well, that will have information on upcoming funding opportunities, resources, some of which, think back, grant writing opportunities grant writing assistance reporting and compliance assistance, those are things that Alaska minutes of a week will be supporting and providing so there's going, there's a lot of collaboration right now and Niels is and his team are just absolutely phenomenal. So, we will have information, and it'll be linking back and forth so that we can make sure that folks have coverage and, you know, access and awareness of all the different funding opportunities.

Yeah, thanks, sir. Hey, I think this is kind of a first step today, but we do have these weekly sessions and so if you didn't get to ask a question or want to come back to something in future sessions, keep that in mind and we'll be here and presenting on different topics over the coming weeks and bring in other speakers to and really be here to support you and whatever is on your plate Cares Act ARPA, how to spend what to spend report, you know, reporting on things, all of that so let's just kind of keep this as conversational and open and kind of build on each other's ideas and and do that as much as possible, so that's kind of how we're approaching it we're focused on collaboration right now, but for it with AFM and anything we can do to support us let us know. Any other questions.

Alright, looks like that was it.

Yeah I see thanks in the chat and send us the PowerPoint so that's what that's what we'll do.

Yes, and we as if it wasn't mentioned already, we will the AFM website. We are also starting to create a recorded events and trainings, library, and this will be the recording and the PowerPoint will be uploaded to that as well.

Perfect. Thanks so much, everybody. Thanks sir.

All right, thanks so much nails appreciate your time.