(Above) New Vermilion County Board Finance and Personnel Committee Chairman Steve Miller talks about COVID relief ARPA funds being the main topic at the upcoming December 12th committee meeting.
During the previous year; the much of the focus on the Vermilion County Board belonged to the Finance and Personnel Committee, and their efforts to update county employees’ salaries to make them more competitive.
Now, the focus comes back to that committee, with the issue of how to divide the county’s $14,000,000 in American Rescue Plan Act COVID relief money.
New committee chairman Steve Miller says that will be the main focus of the committee’s next meeting; Monday, December 12th. No final decisions will be made, but perhaps some early rankings of the different requests.
Reelected County Board Chairman Larry Baughn (top row, middle) says the county’s COVID relief ARPA money can came in handy when a small town received some ARPA funds, but not enough to complete a key project.
AUDIO: Well, we obviously will have more requests than we’ll be able to fully fund. And some of the projects will probably have more merit, as far as the board is concerned, than others. You know, it’s never easy to decide how large sums of money should be spent. And there will be a lot of people with differing opinions because we have people from different parts of the county. But it’ll all work out.
County Board Chairman Larry Baughn, who is not on the committee but will be at the meetings in an advisor’s role, says the county may be able to help small communities get the full amount needed to complete some important infrastructure work.
AUDIO: You know we’ve had that $14,000,000, a little over a year now. We’ve had it in the county coffers. Now we have spent some for county use. Probably, I’m going to guess, because I don’t have it in front of me, probably a little over two-and-a-half million so far. But what we’ve done is we’ve reached out to the communities and seen what their needs are. Because although they got ARPA money, maybe it was not enough to complete an entire project.
Next Monday’s Vermilion County Finance and Personnel Committee meeting is set for 6 PM.
