CARES Act Funding: Eligible Uses, Tracking and Reporting

7:59PM Dec 2, 2021

Speakers:

Keywords:

funds

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grant

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cares

alaska

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expenditures

arpa

tribes

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quarterly reports

treasury

sub recipients

relief

eligible

point

recipient

report

folks want to wait a few minutes and let others join and then we'll get started. All right. Why don't we go ahead and move forward? Yeah, hi everybody. My name is Nils Andreas. I'm the Executive Director of the Alaska misbeliefs. Glad to participate in this AFN navigator program, a weekly seminar webinar on all things federal relief from Cares Act, ARPA, everything in between and here to try to shed some light on where we're at in the process. What questions might be out there and challenges, timelines and opportunities. And this week, we'll talk a little bit about Cares Act. I can't hear Greg, you can't hear me. Okay, um, why don't we shift gears I do want to introduce I think we have a couple of the AFN navigators on. Gregor, you want to? You want to give a quick welcome

to me. I can't hear anybody else. I'm gonna log off and log back in.

Okay. How about Mary do you want to give a quick welcome Are you able to say a few words Kenick. Maybe not okay.

Oh, I'm sorry. I was on mute. I apologize for that. I was having some problems this morning and asked Greg to host the meeting this morning with you. I'd like to thank you for your time and welcome everybody on board. We can get the meeting started.

And it looks like Greg is back. Greg, are you able to hear us now?

Yeah, I can finally hear you guys sorry. Anyway, I think Mary I introduced yes and we are off and running.

Yeah, good. I'm gonna small group today but I know that a lot of folks might listen to these afterward at their convenience. So I'm just going to walk through as much as I can. And I take whatever time we want to feel free to stop me along the way and ask questions and we'll monitor the chat bar for that and see what comes up. So I'm going to share my screen

and think that should work out just fine. And you can see

a number of websites that should be helpful for folks to be thinking about. So the focus today was is on the Cares Act at this point. You should be very familiar with and almost done with your Cares Act approach. And I think the reason to come back to Cares Act at this point is because for right now, the deadline for the Cares Act covered period is the end of this year. So it's 1230 2021 is when you should have expanded or obligated all of your Cares Act funding. And I will note that that is there there is still the potential for a bill to pass. In Congress. And I think there's some chance for success at that. But the bill would extend Cares Act, funding period and specifically these Coronavirus relief funds that covered period for another year for tribal governments and and I know that congressional delegation is working hard at that. And that would really be a benefit for many in Alaska. So we're operating under the assumption that this will be extended but I think everybody should be really focused on doing what they can to plan for now for finalizing their Cares Act expenditures by the end of this calendar year 2021. It's and this isn't dissimilar situation than where we've been at before it with the Cares Act. You'll remember that we were at this same position a year ago when the original deadline was 1230 2020. And in the last two weeks, they extended it and by then, a lot of at least from from my understanding a lot of local governments that kind of rushed to to get these out the door in one form or another. And we're in that same position. So be thinking about what you have left to spend from your Cares Act Coronavirus Relief Fund monies. I know that for local governments, there's still about $20 million out there to be spent down and we're checking in with cities and boroughs around the state to see what help they might need for that. If you need. If you're not sure about where you're at with your Cares Act funding. If you have funds that are just you're not sure what to do with it, get that out the door and you don't want those funds. To revert back to the federal government. Or if you just generally have questions about the Cares Act or reporting, please contact us contact the AFN navigator program. I know they have a great team in place and AML to Don Wesley in our office can be reached to address any of these kinds of questions and we work closely then with the AFN navigator program to to address any of the challenges that are out there. At this point, you're familiar enough with eligible expenditures of the Cares Act. So I want to focus just if you're not familiar with the resource at Treasury, their main page for kind of all things assistance for state, local and tribal governments is here and it runs through your ARPA funds, as well as this Coronavirus Relief Fund, which is the Cares Act funds that we're talking about. Really, you're familiar enough with the federal guidance that's been published? That's in the federal register that goes through what's eligible and then the FAQs? I think today we can spend more time on some of the reporting requirements because this is probably where we should be more. Yes getting the funds out the door by the by the right timeline is important. But I'm maybe more concerned at where we're at with reporting. And the Cares Act reporting is, is handled through the Office of Inspector General and they have a page up OIG treasury.gov focuses on cares ACH reporting and record keeping information, a long list of resources here with links to kind of different presentations or guidance that they've put out.

I'll draw your attention to two of those. And, again, if you haven't looked at these, I think it's important to do that now. I think there will be more focused scrutiny of Cares Act, spending and reporting in the next, you know, in the coming months. And really the risk is at this point if you haven't been reporting if, if a recipient hasn't been reporting correctly, or at all, you know, there's there's very definitely the opportunity for Treasury and OIG to come in and do an audit and recoup those funds even even if you've spent them if you haven't done that correctly. Then, you know, they can come through and audit that and you would Oh, oh back those carriers Act funds. That's the biggest danger at this point is that you've you've received funds and if you haven't reported or expended them correctly, then you've kind of got that lie at that risk. So there's two documents related to care Zack reporting. That are important. The first is the procedures for for that reporting. And there's a good document that runs through prime recipient quarterly submissions and this is through grant solutions. So you should be familiar with your Grant Solutions processes. All tribal governments are prime recipients, and that's different than city cities and most boroughs in Alaska. So it means that your tribal governments are specifically named as the recipient and responsible for for all the funding from their allocation. And it does note that these are quarterly reports that are due through through your Grant Solutions portal for this covered period, from March 2020 through December 31 2021. And that's the nice thing. One of the things that I think we forget about is that even if you received funds, late or if you still haven't spent funds, you're not just looking forward to between now and December 31. You're really looking back at this whole period from March 1 2020 through December 31 2021 at all potential eligible expenditures. So you might have made expenditures between within that period that even though you didn't use your Cares Act funds for those initially, you would record those funds as being applied to those expenditures prior to your receipt of the funds or use specifically. So you're thinking about these funds in accounting terms and accrual and not on a cash basis and you're reporting back on them in the same way. So you are using this Grant Solutions portal you'll have Treasury will have populated that portal with all your information. You'll famed two prepares one or most two you can see that here who are reporting quarterly, all of your obligations and costs incurred. And again, if you're if you've already gone through this process, you'll be familiar with this if you haven't then and I think digging into Grant Solutions is probably really important at this point and getting this in place important. So you're you're gonna be reporting out on all your projects, kind of what did you spend money on? These are the different expenditure categories and basically these are your eligible expenditures. Your administrative expenses, you're not using an indirect rate you're not doing de minimis Cares Act is kind of direct administrative expenses of these funds. If you had staff that were applied to responding to our council members or you know, whatever that look like if you had individuals who are working directly in support of COVID response economic impact, and you can you can be dedicating a large portion of your care sack funds to them. tribal police officers any emergency response in a community health care all those would be substantially dedicated to

two Cares Act COVID testing economic support, this is your kind of relief for individuals, or others who have experienced economic downturn as a result of the Coronavirus. This is food distribution, housing support medical expenses any of your payroll for public health and safety employees PPE public health expenses. If there are businesses that you provided assistance to. Then you would list that any unemployment workers comp benefits etc. But again, it's up to the tribal government to determine what those expenditures which are necessary and then you just allocate them to each of those different categories. The The other thing I think important for Prime recipients for tribes is that you do need to list out any use of those funds greater than 50,000 per contract or grant grantee. You need to specify a lot more information in in how that was awarded. That includes loans. If you made transfers to other governments, and it's important to know that you can do that. Cares Act funds aren't stuck with the tribe. You can move it to the city, you can move to a borough you can move it to other government entities and there's a list later on about what that looks like. You can do that. And then if you had funds that were used for contracts, grants transfers, below 50,000. You would report those in aggregate so all your individual benefit payments that went out. You're not going to report those individually. You're going to report them in aggregate any of your other expenditures below 50,000. You would do that in aggregate too. So all of that is in here and then basically what OIG is going to do is Office of the Inspector General what they're going to do is conduct reviews of those pretty frequently after you have made your report and here's kind of the reporting timeline. So here's where we're at. Right now we're in cycle seven. And the ability to

submit in Grant Solutions kind of opens up in October and it closes by the 10th of January. So you only have for this period through you'll have kind of 10 days to be reporting on on that period. And then what oh IG does is look at that in the 10 days after and make sure that everything's in order. If you haven't been doing these quarterly reports you do have the ability to go in now. And you won't go back to those previous reports but you can put everything in at this point. Think true those up and put everything in as near as you can as possible. You can also there's the ability to correct reports that you submitted previously, if you had interim reports or others that need to be corrected. You can certainly do that. Note that the reporting cycle actually goes through October of 2022. And so you're reporting on kind of your your expenditures now in in January, but Treasury anticipates that you might still be paying things out in the months to come beyond that, including for federal single audit. You know, which might happen more like in this period, so you can obligate funds to your federal single audit now and report out on those at the end of this reporting cycle. So the reporting period is beyond the covered period. So expenditures obligated prior to 1231 of this year, but the reporting period is actually through October of 2022. The rest of what's in this document kind of goes through what OIG is going to do and it's useful to look through just kind of how they're approaching everything here the questions that they'll ask, did the prime recipient do this, this and that. So if you've got time, you can look through that. But it's not necessary for now. So I think the only other thing to point out in this document is, again, you should have already been doing this all through grant solutions.gov. All of your information is already in there if you haven't been and so there's ways to get in there and and get started or close things up as the case may be the other so that's the the reporting document. I think this FAQ is maybe more more useful in terms of really understanding how reporting should occur. And if you've got questions, I think some of the terminology ends up being confusing prime recipient sub recipient we talked about sub recipients just last week, I think or recently and all your sub recipient information and how to account for it is in here but you're the prime recipient, which means you get these funds directly you're responsible for them and you owe them back at the end of the day. Sub recipient is if you move some of your funds to a third party who's providing services on your behalf versus a beneficiary who you're kind of granting funds to or providing relief to because they've been impacted by COVID. So that goes through that there. I'm not going to spend more time on sub recipients because we did go through that in a web webinar previously. But just again, if you have provided your Cares Act funds to somebody a third party to provide a service or deliver grants on your behalf then you need to be tracking all of their all of their information at the same time. You This answer is just some good general questions. Not everybody has to be in sam.gov Even though it's recommended, all of your sub recipients should be probably but beneficiaries it doesn't make sense so much. But this is a useful way to make sure that you've got all of that reporting or information. There's more about sub recipients and how to handle them.

Sorry, I'm gonna skip through that. This is been confusing all along. What's an obligation versus what's an expenditure? And and this is a nice explanation and obligation is a commitment to pay a third party with your CRF funds through a contract grant loan or other arrangement. So it's kind of a written agreement that everybody signed off to that you'll pay for a certain for certain information. There's a question in the chat bar and I will provide contact information later but in terms of what needs to be provided, your just your you should be keeping things like timesheets your sub recipient should be tracking and being they should be able to keep all of those records and have them available. You're not submitting any of those kind of direct documents to Treasury and your quarterly reports. You're just reporting on kind of your base numbers. What did you spend money on who did the money go to? And that's really the extent of what's going in your quarterly reports. Separately, there's a whole record keeping process for timesheets, and other documentation that you'll need to be responsible for. So it's kind of nice, at least in terms of the quarterly reporting. You're just reporting your base numbers for how you've used funds. And that the thing I think I talked a little bit about this covered period versus the reporting period. So you need to have obligated funds during the covered period. And the performance delivery must have occurred during this covered period, but you might pay after after the covered period. So expending the funds is actually that the payment of in relation to this obligation. They say you know, normally that would be about 90 days, but again, there's this kind of federal single audit piece where it's anticipated that that occurred later on in the reporting period, you might obligate funds to it now but that piece will come at a different point in time outside of this covered period. And it talks a little bit about what's a project that's if you're building a medical facility are launching a beneficiary resident grant program or relief program, that's a project and then separately, you would list out kind of what went to that project how much did you expand on housing or food or utilities, relief, etc. talks through contract grants. It's worth noting that some of these terms end up being a little bit different than you might be useful with other federal programs. So be looking at these specifically. They end up being very different than normal federal grant programs because Cares Act funds aren't grants, they're they're federal relief or financial assistance, and they should be treated a little bit differently. So be looking at kind of these terms to know what's different about this terminology, then you might be used to hear I mentioned this transfers to other government entities. Your Cares Act funds could go up, down and sideways. For any of these different government entities. So you Yeah, if you're, if you come to the end of the year, if you work closely with your City borough or with or with another tribe, or tribal designated organization, if you can't spend the funds, but you know, that they can or could have during that covered period and maybe have eligible expenditures that aren't covered. You can make transfers of those funds and and that transfer will be you'll kind of track that. Specifically the, but they will be and then there's guidance on kind of who reports on what so transfers are different than grants to any of these entities. You're not submitting 1090 nines over $600 You're not submit you're keeping track of all those things. Is one of the questions that's out there, but in terms of the reporting to Treasury, you're just reporting the base numbers.

I have seen the question come up, and I'll just answer this now in case it's related to the 1099 question for the individual relief that you provided tribal members out of your Cares Act money that is non taxable, and there's a good IRS site that that talks about this. Hopefully you can see this. So FAQs for payments by tribal governments to their individual members. That's really clear about these are not not taxable, or they shouldn't be counted as taxable income and it gives you additional guidance about what funds or how you should be tracking those. So yeah, good guy that answered that question too. I'm gonna keep going on this. So you're just tracking Cares Act these and when I say Cares Act, it's only the Coronavirus relief funds, the CRF funds that we're actually talking about. So if you receive different types of Cares Act funds from HUD, or BIA or other entities, you're reporting on those separately. And, and so it's just the CRF funds that you're you're focused on you're not required to follow the FFA ta reporting requirements. You should be conducting your accounting on an accrual basis unless you normally do cash. It talks through you know lump sum payments versus other types of payments and how to report those.

Keep

moving through these because I want to get to other things. So again, here's the reporting structure and grant submissions and you're just reporting kind of project numbers and eligible expenditures for where your funds went, where they contract. So what were the projects, what were contracts, grants, loans, transfers to other government entities or direct payments. And those are all just for 50,000 or more so if it's less than that, then you're just doing an aggregate of in aggregate we try we had this many contracts and so on. So there's the reporting schedule. I think that's probably oh, here's a good there's a question about timesheets and whatnot. So you're just payroll costs individuals, any other payments regardless of the amount that all just goes under aggregate direct payments to individual sections. In the in the Grant Solutions portal. I don't know that anybody access FEMA funds, but it talks about how to manage any CRF funds that you dedicated to your FEMA non federal cash match so that's in there, you can make changes to your Grant Solutions just by editing those, you know, more or less in the week but negative numbers if you need to change something from a previous or redo something from a previous reporting cycle. Any any other questions out there, put those in the chat bar. And I'll just scroll through this a little bit. This is just talking about how do you change reports that you have made in the past and probably important thing to know is you can change them you can't go back to that report, but you make modifications in your upcoming quarterly reports. You've got just 10 days at the end of the quarter to get those reports in. You can request extensions. If you haven't filed any reports the now's probably a good time to contact them and ask how you go about doing that and or just jump into Grant Solutions and start there are aren't there penalties necessarily that I found in that guidance? But you know, I think it's there's definitely some language in the Cares Act guidance around. If you're not reporting you are found non compliant. You can correct that. But at the end of the day if you're not compliant, then there's a high likelihood that then when an audit is occurring, you might be required to pay those funds back. Yeah, any I'll pause any questions from folks online beyond what's in the chat or other questions that you have? The Yeah, here's your record keeping requirements. Yeah, Leo, did you have a question?

Or just curious about, um, supplemental requests for individuals who are not tribal members or belong to Alaska Native health or not health corporation but Alaska Native corporations who don't have a enrollment, so and if there's mechanisms for these for people who are like that, that definition?

Yeah. I haven't. I haven't seen anything in any of the guidance that limits the tribal allocation to be used just on behalf of tribal members. And, but I but I know that that's how that's been treated, I think, mostly around the state. But I haven't seen anything in the in the federal guidance at all that that makes that limitation. So I think that the prime recipient should think about their allocation in ways that benefits, you know, their community in response to COVID-19. The public health side of things and the economic impact from COVID-19. And there, there aren't conditions or restrictions on how those funds are used in response to those things outside of kind of what's, what's already here. Treasury doesn't delineate it at all. And I've had the same question kind of come up. About can cities spend just within their city border or outside and there's nothing in the guidance that says it's restricted to a city boundary. So, I think that is I mean, it ultimately ends up being up to the the recipient, the prime recipient for determining whether that expenditure either beyond the city borders or to others in the community is necessary in response to COVID-19 and the corresponding economic impacts. I'm so happy to be corrected if others know differently, but that's my understanding. Um, yeah. So I want to maybe I'll leave it at that for for Cares Act unless there are other questions. I think we we've covered, but I could provide a PowerPoint but I know that we went through Cares Act expenditures back in October and one of the first EFA navigator calls and I don't want to belabor that at all. I think the important thing right now for for Cares Act is no one kind of this question about this is all wrapped up on December 31, or is it extended a year? And I think that the hope is that it's extended, but the the reality right now is that we've got maybe 30 days to get these funds, expended in ways that are consistent with the Treasury guidance. So I think that's where people should be focused on and again, a lot of this rests at this point two years in 18 months and on reporting. Have you done your reporting throughout on a quarterly basis? Is it consistent with and follows all the reporting guidelines? If you haven't, what helped you need to to get that cleaned up and taken care of and I would say that's probably a reach out to your AFM navigators now and and flag that, that you're behind or not sure about where you're at with reporting and I know kind of that team is able to, to help. But shift gears a little bit since there are more question and that is probably kind of where we're at with with Cares Act. We'll go through more from ARPA in the coming weeks, including next week. I think we'll talk about infrastructure a little bit. water, sewer broadband, that kind of thing. And, and reporting on ARPA a little bit later. But I know we've just launched a program that I want to make sure everyone's aware of on grant writing. And the EFA navigator program has done a great job of compiling current funding opportunities that are relevant to and especially directed at the Alaska Native community. And tribes specifically as eligible under almost all these grant programs. I think it's clever that they've kind of color coded the so the the green ish color.

Oh, it's the same as the logo. Oh, it is clever. So green should be easily accessed. Grant funding. The yellow should be kind of moderately easy to access and then read ends up being just more work to access those grants. You could think about these two in terms of kind of how competitive they are, how much work goes into them how prepared you need to be to apply for any of them. And some of them more relevant to you than others and for different issues. So so like, trying to think about a good one. Some of these are so federal transit, transit administration grants. So this is specific to a local transportation. Here's Native American museum brass, so there's only a few applicants out there who might really be interested in those but if they're, if that applies to you in Alaska, then it's definitely worth you know, trying to try to move forward with and what AFN has done at this point is provided or the next month or so, free grant writing assistance for for any of these and, and there'll be more information that goes out to make sure you know how to access that but for now, the best way to do it is to contact AML Don Wesley, at dawn@html.org or 907795304. She's kind of your intake on grant writing. And then she can direct you to some appropriate resources or we'll just help you through any of the grant writing you need to do. There's three specifically that I want to focus on. And we'll probably come back to these in a more specific grant writing outreach session. But the three that I wanted to flag to have like need to be in in the next two weeks. The homeowner Assistance Fund is one of those, the and this these are funds that are already at Treasury with your name on them if you're a tribal government or tribally designated housing entity. These are funds that have your name on them, you you go in, complete the forms and and have access to these funds. That process needs to be complete by December 15 2021. I think it's an easy first step just to make sure if you're eligible, and if it hasn't already been done. Get that done in the next two weeks. If you're worried about how to, you know then follow up with some of the planning requirements. You've got time for that. So I think you kind of go through the portal first to request the funds. And then you go through a process to develop plans for using those funds. But there Yeah, I think they're right there ready if you need help figuring out kind of how to do this. It's through the online portal, which I think is the same as your your other ARPA funds, but give us a call and we'll walk you through it if you need just a little bit of information to complete the request. So make sure that's done in these next two weeks. Let's make sure that we're not leaving this federal relief on the table. And not in Alaska. Let's bring these funds to Alaska to be able to address the issues that are out there. And the other one that's got even kind of an earlier timeline. And that might feel a little bit intimidating is the State Small Business Credit Initiative. And I think the long the short of it is or the short of it is that there's $473,000 available for as a baseline for every tribe in Alaska. And you just have to complete the complete the form requesting those funds. I think the concern or the or what's intimidating is kind of what happens next and managing those funds and and basically these are funds available to try to provide small business support through kind of these loan or credit processes. What's maybe important is that you don't have to do that on your own right you request the funds and then you contract with a third party a bank or lending institution, the Small Business Development Center may be available to help and they'll put together a process that gets these funds out the door for you. And, and what that means is that we're not leaving, I think there's, you know, 100 plus tribes who haven't applied for these funds right now and Alaska. Right now, there's $89 million out there with Alaska's name on it that haven't hasn't been applied for. So I highly recommend going through the process if you've got questions about what happens next. That's what we're here for. I think that's what the AFN Navigators are able to jump in on. But we'll develop a process for supporting tribes through through the other side of that process. So access the funds first set up a program later, will support you and support it in in that program. And so those are two the third that's out there is the ARPA, the capital projects fund. You've got more time on this then and for some of these other for those other two I think you have so June or February. I'll find it but basically, this is a compliment to you already received your ARPA Cissell for funds the krona right Coronavirus, state local federal leave funds. This is the other side of it. These funds are specific tech capital projects that are that include broadband infrastructure connectivity technology project so this is just helping pay for increased speed. Get schools connected provide kids with devices all that stuff, easier multipurpose community facility projects or schools, libraries, health centers, et cetera and so on, but that's what these capital project funds are for. I want to see if that gets me back to the main page. These are some tribes have until June 1 to apply for these funds. Again, these are funds that have your name on them. All you have to do is go through a pretty straightforward request process and and be able to access these I think the total that went out kind of nationally for tribes is 100 million. But you can imagine that there's a large portion of that that's dedicated to Alaska. I want to say it's like $187,000 per drive. But that might that might have been for the broadband, NTIA grant. There's more information about these capital project fund funds available on the Treasury site. So I will put this one in the chat bar here's the Small Business Credit Initiative and then here's this homeowner assistance fun.

Quick question. Yeah. And while you're on the subject, have you checked out the EPA environmental justice grants

I have not but I want to say there are

some really interesting, there's some real interesting infrastructure funding that can be really tied into that. You know, that these programs especially the broadband and some of these other, you know, connectivity, issues that are but there's I went to win a couple of their webinars last month or a couple months ago and but there's some some fantastic opportunities for some, some great funding through the EPA and the environmental justice program. So I just wanted to point that out.

No, that's great. And I think right now, What's hard is that it's so overwhelming all the opportunities that are out there. The Navigator Program has that resource for the grant funding. Alaska arpa.org has, you know, basically a similar set of grants but expanded for kind of anybody in Alaska who might be interested in grant writing. So Alaska arpa.org is more for for state, local, government, tribes, nonprofits, small businesses. So it'd be those might be there. But I think sharing that information, making sure everybody knows about these opportunities is important. And right now, there's this opportunity to if you've got grant writing needs, and make sure you're reaching out to the navigator program to AML. And, one, just complete the forms necessary for any of those three, make sure you you've got access to those funds that have your name on it. And and otherwise, if there's something that's more competitive or harder, there's the ability to kind of fun some portion of the grant writing necessary for you to access those funds. So yeah, it's a great opportunity. It's when you think of all the federal grants out there right now and the emerging state efforts. It's a lot. I know that on the other side of receiving funds, everybody's got some capacity to be able to, to manage those report on them and implement good projects. But we don't want to leave money on the table. When we know it can benefit Alaska communities. So I think with that, that's kind of the things that I can think of other questions or comments.

Here is curious about you know, you talked about some future planning now can can we, you say, get creative about it. So, um, think about some of the future needs that are arising from that, you know, from the COVID era and then some of the things that really come to mind or, you know, deal with broadband and internet connectivity. And, you know, I've been worked I worked with a group it's called the Internet Society, and they were, they are focused on getting internet to communities. You know, all throughout the world, but the one that I focused on was the indigenous connectivity summit and put together some fantastic recommendations on you know, how to, you know, you know, what, all the North American tribes because the Canadian tribes, you know, the First Nations and then there's the, you know, tribes in the lower 48. And, you know, there's just a lot of, you know, information and fantastic resources. And I just wanted to point that out that, you know, get there's a lot of coordinated effort, right, and just kind of, in like you say it's sometimes it's just being creative and putting together the dots and, and just making yourself available in that that's sort of what I've been doing and it's like, because you know, I worked at at swelling and Associates there down the street from you guys and worked for there seven years, but then I'm like, man, we got to help organize this this funding because there's so much money coming through and that's my strength is you know, organizing and putting together data structures and financial, you know, you know, structure of how data flows and reporting and financial reporting and making sure you meet deadlines. All of those, you know, you know, in cybersecurity, right, they're protecting data and that is a huge part of you know, the things that are ingrained in what I do every day. And so, I'm trying to keep emulating this into, you know, this, you know, huge opportunity and trying to, you know, get it so that we we do good with this. We build things that are sustainable. For our communities and stable for Alaska, that builds on infrastructure and builds on, you know, training and job opportunities that you know, I mean, there's just so much like you say that the thoughts and ideas that are are integrated into a lot of the, you know, federal government so I just wanted to point that out.

No, I think you're right, it is that right now is this time and maybe once in a lifetime time to to really advance all the things that have we've been thinking about for so many years and to address so many of the challenges that are out there. Unfortunately, we've got, you know, a very discreet window to be able to do that. So I'm I'm hopeful that Alaskans, you know, across different sectors and levels of government can work together. And, and, and take advantage of of all that. It's great to have the AFN navigator program in place. And I'll ask maybe Greg to close us out. Any thoughts or final closing comments, Greg, as you look forward

I'm nothing in particular Other than that, we certainly appreciate the partnership with AML to be able to present these trainings. We on the website, as you've indicated, or have recordings of every session that we've done, and will continue to to have trainings for the foreseeable future, I guess at this point, but but encourage everybody to take a look at recordings if they miss key aspects of it. And do not hesitate to get in touch with anybody in the AFN navigator program or over at AFM. They'll point you in the right direction. And I'm sure the same thing is true with you know, you're available to folks that need assistance. So, thanks very much for your presentation again today. It's very well done.

Thank you and thanks, everybody. Have a good day. Bye