Columbia City Council to review CARES Act funding
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Columbia City Council will meet at 7 p.m. on Monday for its regularly scheduled meeting.
The council will review a contract between the county to provide funding for the Columbia/Boone County Health Department from the CARES Act.
The health department outlined how much funding it would need to hire additional contact tracers, health educators and more and ultimately submitted a proposal for $1,799,004.64.
"We want the people in Boone County to get the most value in the most efficient way out of this funding and with all the information that's out there now about testing and tracing it stands to reason that that's one of the highest priorities in funding of this type," said Presiding Boone County Commissioner Dan Atwill.
The county currently has 24 people doing contact tracing, but they are not able to commit all of their time to contact tracing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends counties the size of Boone County should have 54. The health department is requesting enough money to add 15 full-time contact tracers.
Columbia Mayor Brian Treece said the number of contact tracers the county has is an important indicator of how well leaders are managing the virus.
"Our contact tracers are over worked, they're behind," Treece said.
The money will also help pay for COVID-19 tests for people who are uninsured.
"We want to eliminate as many barriers as possible to people getting tested, improving testing, getting more rapid turn around of those results, along with contact tracing are the three best things that we can do as a community to help prevent the spread of COVID-19," Treece said.
"It's in the best interest that everyone who needs a test gets a test," Atwill said.
Atwill said it was important to allocate money to the health department because COVID-19 case numbers continue to increase.
The Boone County Commission will track how the health department spends the money before Dec. 30.
"They documented how they would spend the money and under the terms of the agreement, because of the way the act is written, they will submit invoices as they go along," Atwill said.
The county is currently working on an online portal where people will be able to apply for CARES Act funding and provide documentation that they spent the funding before being reimbursed by the county.
Atwill said it was important to move forward with providing the funding for the health department before the portal goes live because of the emergency nature of the situation.
He said cases continue to rise and there is greater need for people to get tested.
