Milam County Judge Steve Young told commissioners about the The American Rescue Plan Act at the Monday court meeting in the courthouse.
Because of the Biden administration’s plan, the county will have $2.4 million coming to it probably this month and another $2.4 million early next year.
But the money just can’t be tossed in the general fund to spend any way they county wants, there are stipulations to using those funds, Young said.
“We are going to get every nickel of it and spend it some how, some way,” he said.
Young explained that the uses for the funds fall into four broad categories which are:
• To respond to the public health emergency with respect to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 or its negative economic impact including assistance to households, small businesses and nonprofits or aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel and hospitality.
• To respond to workers performing essential work during the COVID-19 public health emergency, by providing premium pay to eligible workers that are performing such essential work, noting that premium pay is up to $13 above regular pay, not to exceed $25,000 per worker.
• For the purposes of governmental services to the extent of the reduction in revenue of such state, territory or tribunal government due to the COVID-19 public health emergency relative to revenues collected in the most recent full fiscal year of the state, territory or tribunal government prior to the emergency.
The judge mentioned revenue losses such as jail revenue losses from 2019 to 2020.
• To make necessary investments in water, sewer, broadband or infrastructure.
Young said the categories are “incredibly broad,” but he is going to find ways to use those funds to benefit the county.
He said the county has lost revenue for certain.
“So what they are saying here is if you have a loss of revenue countywide, then you can use some of that money for that lost revenue. You compare 2020 to 2019 is the way I understand it. So the question is do we have lost revenue? If we do then we can put some of this money in our general fund and we need to do that because our reserve is bad and it needs money,” he told the commissioners. “Did we have a loss of revenues? Yes, we did.”
GRANTS—The rescue plan also has grants that the county can apply for.
“I can assure you we are going to apply for every one of them,” he said.
There are grants for broadband.
“We have been working on the broadband initiative and you know we’ve partnered with Connected Nation-Texas. We have done the survey and we have a good survey sample,” he said.
“There is money for vaccination clinics in the act. There is a possibility we could use some of this grant money to finish up the renovation of the professional building and make it a vaccination clinic,” he said.
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