County allocates final CARES Act Funds

by Patty Cheffey

The Marion County Commission did not give themselves much wiggle room in trying to finish up allocating CARES Act funding during Monday’s meeting.

While they have set aside some funds for the county, including funds for hazard pay for the Sheriff’s Department and money for the required audit because of the CARES Act, the commissioners allocated funds for the final requests. All applications had to be submitted by Oct. 31.

The commissioners also reviewed some requests which had been put on hold during Monday’s meeting, at which they also reviewed sales tax and budgets.

On Monday, the commissioners approved over $398,000 in requests, leaving all but $5,132.34 of the $3.8 million they received from the CARES Act to be spent.

Some tweaking might need to happen, according to Sam Diffenderfer with the Mark Twain Regional Council of Governments, who is helping the county with the process, since some of the funds to be distributed are allocations and exact figures weren’t known as of Monday morning.

Teya Stice, county improvement coordinator, has been working with Diffenderfer and indicated she will be following up those who have funds allocated asking them to get those items ordered and let the county know exact figures on those.

Checks will be cut for those items which are not allocations.

Although Diffenderfer said she had been told counties had until March to cut the checks, she and the commissioners said they would like to have this all wrapped up by Dec. 31.

In other business, the commissioners briefly reviewed fund balances, which County Clerk Valerie Dornberger said are in good shape.

The combined General Revenue and Road and Bridge funds sit at $1,608,217.81, which compares to $1,531,421.08 at this time a year ago.

Sales tax was also up again, Dornberger noted.

General Revenue brought in $174,555.08 in sales tax for November, compared to $168,152.57 this time last year.

Capital Improvement saw $130,916.27 for November sales tax, compared to $126,114.32 in November 2019.

The quarter cent road fund also saw an increase in sales tax at $87,277.52, compared to $84,055.09 in 2019.

Local Use was down about $10,000, Dornberger noted at $74,503.77 compared to $84,916.69 last year.