By Carmen Ensinger
The COVID 19 virus was horrible, but as horrible as it was on the population, it greatly benefitted school districts, municipalities and counties across the nation who received millions of dollars in recovery funds beginning in 2021.
The government passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to provide direct funding to cities, towns, villages and counties to respond to the pandemic. Greene County received $2,519,076.00.
There were specific guidelines on how this money could be spent and what kind of projects it could be used for. There was also a deadline as to when the money had to be spent, or at least obligated, meaning the project might not be done yet, but a contractor was hired and the project was “in the works.”
That deadline was Dec. 31. Greene County didn’t want to leave any money “on the table” so to speak, so rather than run the risk of leaving money unspent, they knowingly “over-obligated.” They just didn’t realize that had over obligated to the extent that they did.
At the Dec. 31 end of the year meeting, board members learned that they had over-obligated ARPA funds to the tune of $69,920.21.
One project that the ARPA funds were used on was the plumbing project at the jail. Several contractors were used on this project and the board thought all of the bills had come in on this project.
As recently as a couple months ago, they saw excess money in the ARPA account and, not wanting to leave that money on the table, obligated those funds for a truck for the highway department. Then, last month, a $49,000 bill came in on the plumbing project that no one was expecting.
“The bottom line is that we budgeted for this in the project and it’s not an extra bill,” Board Chairman Earlene Castleberry said. “It is just a late arriving bill.”
The $2.5 million in ARPA funds was put into an interest-bearing account and over the years has accrued approximately $19,000 in interest that the county could put towards the overage.
However, board member Charlie Helton didn’t want to do this.
“As many holes as we have to fill, I’m not sure why we would spend the interest on something like this,” he said. “They are forcing us to spend all of the rest of the money, so I don’t know why we would spend the interest.”
Board member Rob Hall agreed with Helton.
“I, myself, don’t like the thought of using the interest we made off the ARPA money either,” he said. “There will be a time we might need to use that money for something else. It was a blessing we were able to get it and it will be nice to have it as a cushion.”
Instead, the county will pay for the overage out of its contingency fund, which has nearly $150,000 in it
Castleberry said that Julie Rhoads with Whitworth Horn and Goetten Insurance contacted her and said that after reading an article in the paper that they realized that the coroner’s cooler for the bodies had never been insured.
“She said we should have that insured and that it is worth around $12,000,” Castleberry said. “She also said we should have insurance on the coroner’s vehicle which he was going to park at Daws Funeral Home but the coroner has decided he is not going to park it there now.”
She also informed the board that the county is covered for liability insurance on basically every property they own, even if they don’t know they own it.