By Taylor Boyd
With fewer than 25 days remaining for localities to spend the CARES Act funds or return the money, localities are finalizing projects to help with the effects of COVID-19.
Patrick County
Donna Shough, Human Resource Director and Finance Director, said the county was awarded $3,072,460 in CARES Act money. As of Dec. 7, she estimated $800,000 remained uncommitted. Ideas to spend the available funds will be discussed at the Thursday, Dec. 10 at a CARES Committee meeting.
“We have several projects we have allocated funds for that are still being done,” Shough said, citing the county’s new ambulance as an example. She said Station 8 (the county’s paid crew) will receive a new 2020 Type 1 ambulance that cost $182,620 and was approved at the Oct. 23 board meeting.
Shough said the board approved offering $5,000 grants to the volunteer fire departments and rescue squads. “Four have already been awarded, and we will have four to discuss” at the Thursday meeting, she said.
County Administrator Geri Hazelwood said that as of Oct. 30, $294,212.97 was used to pay retroactive $4 an hour hazard pay to certain county employees.
“We use the Treasury recommendations” to decide on awarding hazard pay, she said.
“Hazard pay ‘means additional pay for performing hazardous duty or work involving physical hardship in each case that is related to COVID-19,’” Hazelwood said, adding it was not for across-the-board employees.
She said the county is giving hazard pay to “sworn law enforcement officers, animal shelter employees only when the attendant has to go out to a home, building inspection for six hours per day “because they are in the office for the remainder, “paid EMS for ambulance time only, Transfer Station for all hours worked, and DSS (Department of Social Services) only for time spent doing home visits.”
She added the COVID-19 cleaning is handled in-house, but county maintenance, custodians or housekeeping employees also were not awarded hazard pay.
“We have the maintenance department that does the spraying and cleaning. We also have the housekeeping who does the cleaning as well throughout the day and at any time we need them to do additional cleaning that is done,” she said.
Employees in the Parks and Recreation department also did not receive additional pay, Hazelwood said.
Shough said $450,000 was earmarked for a Non-profit and Agricultural Grant Program, administered by the Patrick County Economic Development Authority (EDA). An additional $200,000 was approved for that program at the Nov. 4 CARES Committee meeting.
Shough said the $24,000 contract for updates to the county’s and EDA’s websites also was awarded.
The CARES Committee approved touchless restroom facility upgrades, estimated to cost around $11,000. Those upgrades are not completed.
However, much of a new flooring in the administration building has been completed or is currently underway.
“The floor covering is a vinyl laminate so as not to mold, mildew, chip, slip, scrap. It’s supposed to be a durable, long-lasting, easily cleaned product,” she said, adding it cost $98,000.
Hazelwood said the proposal to give the Town of Stuart additional CARES funds has not been discussed “as of late.”
She noted $257,100 was allocated to the town for economic support. The initial amount was based on the town’s population, Hazelwood said, and added the CARES Committee has not discussed the potential use of funds to help those who need utility assistance.
The county’s CARES ACT funds also were not allocated to help the school system, she said. “They (School Administration) had not requested any funds for CARES.”
However, “there’s so many” plans “here at the end just trying to wrap up the deadline of the funds. There’s a lot out there, so many things that just keep coming in, requests for funds. Just things to improve us to try to prepare us for the unknown,” Hazelwood said.
“We’ve just had such a short timeframe to gather all this information together and then have the funds expended. It’s been really difficult to try to pull all this together and make it all happen by the end of December,” she added.
City of Martinsville
City officials said they had no problems in finding ways to spend its $2,190,576 share of CARES Act funds, according to Linda Conover, Director of Finance.
“We worked hard. While people were still talking about what they were going to do with the money, we jumped right into small business assistance,” she said.
As of Sept. 30, the city had expended $1,724,100.20 of the funding provided, including “$438,991.75 of the funds spent went to small business assistance,” she said, adding funds were given to 110 individual businesses.
“We had a team that met every week, sometimes twice a week, to just get these funds out there” for business assistance. “That was a big goal for us and telework capabilities,” she said.
Conover said $225,718.67 was spent to improve telehealth capabilities of public employees.
“Mostly, the money was for actual laptops. We had very few laptops available to employees, and what few we had was pretty much outdated. We were rationing them in the beginning in case we got sent home to work. Now, we’re where we could, if we need to close this building, have a sustainable number of employees work from home,” she said, adding the investment made city employees able to work remotely.
As of Sept. 30, the city spent $612,485.06 on payroll for public health and safety employees, she said.
“The money was really only used to pay the fire department and the emergency medical services (EMS). There’s a clause in there (CARES Act) that you can’t supplant fund that are already being contributed by federal and state means. So, for the sheriff’s department we get a lot of that payroll reimbursed every month through the Compensation Board,” Conover said.
She said Martinsville determined it could use CARES funds pay fire and EMS because “they were considered at risk.” Conover said the city did not give hazard pay to employees before Sept. 30.
“At this rate, there won’t be any coming out of it because I’ve pretty much spent the rest of it already,” she said, and added that included $200,000 for housing support.
“Back in the beginning, when people struggling to pay their rent and pay their utilities, some of that money went to GRACE (Grace Network) to help support those families struggling to pay their rents before the moratorium went” into effect, Conover said.
“Some of the money also went into Social Services to help out. Through utility billing we made a payment plan” Participating customers opting to use a payment plan could get help from Social Services, she said.
The city spent $171,201.48 on public health expenses to “make this building (Martinsville Administration Building) as accessible as we can to the public,” Conover said, adding that included adding plexiglass to separate county employees and the public, redoing the court rooms to spread out jurors, and adding automatic and touch-free items like touchless restroom facilities and touchless water fillers to reduce the number of items people need to touch while in the building.
“We did this so the public can do business with us,” she said, and added $54,000 was spent on economic support that is exclusive of small business, housing, and food assistance.
“It was for childcare. The United Way had a program going and they needed funding to support childcare,” Conover said.
As of Sept. 30, Conover said the city spent $16,996.13 on personal protection equipment, and $3,583 for unemployment benefits. She said $1,124.11 was spent for personnel and services that were diverted to substantially different jobs.
“These were the employees that got shifted from their regular duties to do decontamination like spraying down the buildings,” Conover said.
“We still have some outstanding purchase orders on some equipment that’s being installed, but the money’s gone. We have accounted for every nickel at this point,” she said.
Henry County
Henry County’s Deputy Administrator Dale Wagoner said the county has committed all the $8,821,806 CARES money it was awarded.
“It’s all going to be spent by Dec. 30,” he said, adding the county is waiting on arrivals of some computers, temperature monitors for the courthouse, some PPE, and for teleconference equipment to be installed at the courthouse.
“There is $943,000 outstanding right now, but it all should be spent by Dec. 30,” Wagoner said, adding that the county bought some high dollar items with the money.
“We purchased an ambulance for the public safety staff that costs around $250,000. It is supposed to be delivered on Dec. 14, PAPRs (Powered Air-Purifying Respirators) for public safety and law enforcement personnel to help protect them against COVID-19,” he said.
As of Sept. 30, $24,727.50 has been spent for personnel diverted for a different use, Wagoner said.
“These are the janitors that we have diverted solely for COVID. They were not hazard duty positions, but we’re charging their salaries to COVID because there’s two of them. That’s all they do is to make sure the common areas are clean and sanitized on a regular basis. We charged the actual hours they were dedicated to doing this,” to the CARES Act funds, Wagoner said.
He added that $119,540.12 was spent on economic support that was not for small businesses, housing, or food assistance, with funds given to the United Way to help parents with childcare, and to Social Services, to help residents with utility payments.
Wagoner added that as of Sept. 30, “$32,000 was given to help with utility assistance.”
He said $3,089,314.74 was used for the payroll for public safety. We paid the “county public safety staff and county sheriff’s office” with these funds, he said.
Hazard pay was also given to all sworn law enforcement personnel, “those who wear the badge” and all public safety personnel, excluding janitors and secretaries.
The “911 telecommunicators, by the CARES Act, were permitted to be included in that category, so they also got the hazard pay. However, we cost share their salaries with the City of Martinsville, so they only go the county’s share. The city didn’t participate in giving 911 employees hazard pay,” Wagoner said, adding the hazard pay was $3 per hour from Mar. 15 to Aug. 31.
The county also used $322,772.82 for public health expenses. “This includes the $10,000 we gave to each” of the county’s 13 volunteer fire and rescue departments, “the computers used by public safety, and automatic CPR devices for the paid staff,” he said.
Funds also were used to install touchless entrance ways at the administration building, courthouse, and the sheriff’s office. Additionally, “we installed touchless restrooms at various county buildings and parks,” Wagoner added.
He said the $581,730.97 spent to improve tele-work capabilities primarily was used to buy laptops and small, portable WIFI devices.
“Video conferencing materials are probably not included in this number yet because they’re still doing it,” Wagoner said of projects at the courthouse “where judges and lawyers can do video conferencing to keep from having to transport inmates into the courtroom. They can have bond hearings and stuff like that.”
The county also used its funds to “put up WI–FI at a couple of our parks so students could go and do homework. We’ve expanded (it) around our building on the outside, so you can park in our parking lot and get public W–IFI. We also bought the WI–FI cards for the school systems to give students who may not have internet at home or access to cellular networks to connect their devices,” he said.
As of Sept. 30, $299,700 was used for small business assistance. Wagoner said 114 small businesses were approved for financial grants. “The average grant was $2,500, but some could go up to $5,000,” he said.
The county spent $22,174.62 on personal protection equipment such as masks, face shields, gloves, and gowns; $4,695 on COVID-19 testing, and $17,110.92 on other expenditures.
Wagoner said excess garbage disposal made up around $15,000 of the other expenditure category. “With people staying home, we saw a significant rise in our garbage disposal. So, we charged the excess above and beyond to that category,” he said.
(A more in-depth CARES Act fund breakdown for the remaining Patrick County funds is expected to be published in an upcoming edition after the Dec. 10 CARES Committee meeting.)
