Where: New Stuyahok, Alaska
Problem: The City of New Stuyahok lacked the financial statements required to apply for a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development (RD) grant.
Solution: RCAC prepared the city’s financials and generated statements that met USDA RD requirements.
New Stuyahok is an Indigenous Alaskan Yup’ik village in the Dillingham Census Area, Alaska. The village is located 52 miles northeast of Dillingham on the Nushagak River and covers 33.7 square miles of land and two square miles of water. The population of 570 is 96 percent Alaska Native or part Alaska Native, and the village has a median household income of $42,857 and a 26.6 percent poverty rate.
Solid waste management is a significant and longstanding concern for the City of New Stuyahok. To meet growing operational demands, the city applied for a grant under USDA RD’s Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program to finance the purchase of additional heavy equipment and build a new cell at the landfill.
Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) Rural Development Specialist (RDS) Dessa Wells began working with city officials on Jan. 27, 2022, to help prepare the financial statements required to access USDA grant funding. RCAC provides this technical assistance as part of the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) Technitrain project, made possible by USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS).
The City of New Stuyahok had previously not maintained financial records because it did not have dedicated accounting staff and resources. However, the current administration began tracking expenditures at the beginning of FY2021. Wells gathered all available data and contacted the city’s bank to recover financial records before manually organizing the data and generating statements for each transaction.
To ease the village’s burden, USDA RD waived its requirement for three years of financial statements and accepted the financials presented. To date, New Stuyahok has received $45,000 in USDA grant funding, a portion of which the city must match. The landfill’s expansion will guarantee its continued operation for at least the next 20 years.
