Morgan County government officials are working through the bureaucracy surrounding the American Rescue Plan funding.
Morgan County Treasurer Kim Mitchell says that her office is currently sifting through all of the paperwork to figure out how and where the money can be spent in the county: “We did receive our first tranch, and we will receive two of those. We will receive the second half of the funds in June 2022. What we are working on right now is just trying to understand how we can spend the funds. We are looking at the government regulations, and what they’ve laid down as the guidelines for how we can spend the money. That’s really where we are at right now is trying to understand the proper way to spend.”
Mitchell says her office is looking at all of the projects that municipalities in the county want to do with the funding: “We are looking at revenue loss so that we can use that in ways. Then, we are also taking the suggestions from different municipalities on what they would like to be able to spend this money on. We are working with the U.S. Treasury. They have a lot of things online for us to look at, but this is really where we are at currently.”
She says that many of the projects currently running in the county were in progress before COVID-19 began and therefore may not qualify for the funding. She hopes that the federal government will loosen some restrictions later on so that the county-wide broadband projects, water, and wastewater and sewer projects in the county may possibly be able to be included in the future.