Town Officials:
One of the allowable uses for ARPA funds is to replace lost revenue. If you’ve read the magazine, attended one of our webinars, or read the material on our website you already know that “lost revenue” is defined uniquely by the federal government. In fact, in their eyes you might have “lost revenue” when you actually don’t have any less money. There is great interest in this allowable use because if your community has lost revenue in the eyes of the federal government, you can use a corresponding amount of ARPA dollars for a broad array of government services, including roads, bridges, and culverts.
So, how do you know if you lost revenue in the eyes of the federal government?
Our staff worked to put together an example of what revenue loss would look like in a hypothetical town. The attached spread sheet linked below will walk through the revenue loss calculation from beginning to end. The final tab in the spread sheet has a calculator that your town can use to determine your 2020 lost revenue and also project lost revenue for 2021, 2022, and 2023.
As you finish reviewing this document, you will likely begin to ask questions like “what are all of the revenues that towns should include in their calculation” and “where does xyz fall under the federal revenue classifications?” We have asked the Wisconsin Department of Revenue to enhance this calculator by providing a resource that connects to your financial reporting forms. We are hopeful they will provide this resource and will keep you posted if they do.
For those of you unfamiliar with Excel, here are a few pointers.
1. The tabs at the bottom open up individual worksheets. Begin by clicking on the introduction tab. As you finish reading/reviewing each worksheet, you will need to go to the next tab in the file from left to right. You should see a series of tabs like the ones in the picture below. All you need to do is move your cursor and click on the next tab in the sequence to keep moving through the lost revenue explanation. For your reference, the blue arrows in the picture below are pointing at some of the tabs in the file.
