By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
St. JOSEPH – It’s a problem most people would like to have. Local and county officials in Berrien County will soon be deciding what to do with the millions of dollars they’ll be getting from the latest federal COVID-19 relief package signed into law last month.
Berrien County will be getting nearly $30 million in pandemic relief with individual municipalities and local school districts also getting substantial amounts of money.
Berrien County Community Development Director Dan Fette gave a presentation to Berrien County Commissioners last week about the assistance coming from the American Rescue Plan Act. He told commissioners about when the money should come and what it can be spent on.
Both Fette and County Administrator Brian Dissette cautioned commissioners about making any decision on spending the money until the federal government issues guidance. The first batch of money should drop in the county’s accounts in 45 days with the rest coming a year or more from now. Money has to be spent by the end of 2024.
“There’s so much uncertainty about eligible use definitions and who you can give assistance to,” Fette said. “We expect the federal treasury to issue detailed guidance and we have time to develop eligible use plans … The long and short of it is that we’re not doing anything with the money right away until we get clarification and guidance.”
“We want to do it in a correct manner,” he added. “While it would be good to do sooner rather than later to have an impact but we have to be careful. We should have better answers in two to three weeks … I would hope they would give the maximum amount of flexibility to local governments on how we can spend the money.”
“We do know that states, counties and local governments are required to report how funds are used,” he said. “There will be a lot of accounting and bookkeeping needed. If people don’t comply, they will have to repay what they received.”
Dissette said he’s joining webinars on the topic sponsored by a number of organizations including the Michigan Association of Counties, the Michigan Municipal League and the Michigan Townships Association.
“As soon as we have greater details, we will be in a better position to see how we can spend the money,” he said. “We urge caution. This is a lot of money, it’s a great problem to have but I wouldn’t spend any of it until we have a very clear list of how we can spend money and get clear answers from the state.”
Fette did outline some possible uses of the pandemic recovery funds. They include covering internal costs for personal protection equipment, technical upgrades and security, replacing some revenue lost during the pandemic, giving premium pay to eligible workers and making water, sewer and perhaps broadband infrastructure upgrades.
He said it looks like the county can also transfer some of the funds to non-profit partners with the goal of helping small businesses impacted by the pandemic such as tourism, travel and hospitality. The money could also be transferred to passenger transportation services.
On the other hand, Fette said it’s clear that states are not allowed to offset a reduction in net tax revenue-meaning that the state can’t use it offset revenue sharing cuts to local units of government. In addition, monies cannot be used to shore up pension funds and it looks like there are no provisions for covering the associated administrative costs.
“One of the things we can’t do is that we can’t transfer money directly to local governments,” he said. “But we can transfer money to non-profits and authorities. The good news is that everyone is getting substantial amounts of money.”
When asked about assistance to restaurants which have been among the businesses hardest hit, he said that the American Rescue Plan Act has separate provisions providing direct support to restaurants.
Commissioners briefly discussed how they plan to get public input on spending the money. “I would hope that we’d have some public hearing with the local governments to coordinate so that we’re not all hitting the same categories for funding,” Commissioner Julie Wuerfel said.
Published reports on how much area municipalities will be getting show that the cities of Benton Harbor and Niles will get $10.6 million and $7.2 million respectively. Most other municipalities are getting $1 million or less in funding. The funding formula takes a variety of factors into account including population and poverty.
Local school districts will also be getting funding from the American Rescue Plan Act in addition to the funding provided in two previous federal COVID-19 pandemic relief packages. For example, Benton Harbor is getting a total of $45.9 million, Niles $10.7 million and other districts lesser amounts.
In other action, commissioners approved issuing a countywide state of emergency through June 30 to allow the county board as well as local municipal and school boards hold virtual meetings. State legislation to continue the virtual meetings amendment to the Open Meetings Act has stalled. The current state virtual meeting order expired March 31.
Berrien County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Rockey Adams noted that current Michigan Department of Health and Human Services indoor public gathering rules allow no more than 25 people to gather indoors regardless of the size of the room. Declaring the county state of emergency will allow local and county boards to continue to operate and govern.
Dissette reported that he had received emails from local government officials thanking the county board for the action. County Board Chairman Mac Elliott called it “really disappointing” that state officials haven’t acted to extend the allowing of virtual meetings statewide.
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