Boone County Commission plans to allocate remaining CARES Act funding before years end deadline
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Boone County Commission is planning to allocate its remaining CARES Act funding before its year-end deadline next week.
During a meeting Tuesday morning, commissioners discussed allocating the remainder of the CARES Act funding to organizations within the county.
The county commission had a little over $2 million of CARES Act funding still available for use. The county received more than $21 million in funding earlier this year.
Boone County Commission listed 11 organizations on its Tuesday agenda it planned to allocate the remaining CARES funding to; the City of Ashland, Christian Fellowship School, Boone County Hospital, Boone County University Extension, Christian Chapel Academy, La Petite Ecol, City of Columbia Public Health Funding, City of Columbia Public Health Entity PPE and Sanitation Funding, City of Columbia Public Safety Employee Expenses, City Garden School, the Columbia/Boone County health department and City of Columbia Small Business Assistance Program.
Scott Clardy, the assistant director for the department, said the funding is reimbursement for COVID-19 related costs since the beginning of the pandemic. The department also plans to use the funding to pay for temporary staff members.
The department plans to continue to use the temporary staff members in 2021 for disease investigations, contact tracing, data entry, data analytics and other areas.
Boone County Commission allocated CARES Act funding to the following organizations Tuesday; Christian Fellowship School $32,300.00, City of Ashland $28,608.03, Boone Hospital Center $1,428,129.61, Christian Chapel Academy $15,100.00, Boone County University Extension $1,604.10, La Petite Ecol Inc. $1,400.00, City of Columbia Public Health Funding $1,918,211.84, City of Columbia-Public Safety Employee Expenses $3,082,252.36, and City Garden School $5,500.00.
Principal of La Petite Ecol, Joelle Quoirin, said she's grateful her school received the funds. Quoirin plans to use the funding for new update technology and air purification system in classrooms.
“For us to be able to go from this very dated technology to this very new technology especially when you have to teach online is a huge benefit to our programs especially since we are a language school and we have to have access to a lot of resources that are readily available to different countries and tap into different cultures it’s just very exciting we’re very very grateful,” said Quoirin.
Boone County Northern Commissioner, Jan Thompson, said the commissioner's office will decide on the allocation of final funds next week. Thompson says the commissioner's office is waiting on the finalization of the new spending bill.
"The question on that is whether the president is going to put his signature on that new spending bill that's sitting in Congress that both houses have now passed as soon as we know that, that bill is going to become law and that the time frame has been expanded into 2021.", said Thompson.
Thompson said President Trump signs off on the new spending bill the CARES Act funding deadline will be extended to December 2021. She says the extension would allow them more time to evaluate how to allocate the funds.
As of this week, the County Commission has obligated $20,177,015.78 of the total $21,171,910.00 in CARES Act Funding received. Final disbursements will be made at the December 29, 2020 meeting of the Boone County
Commission.
