Marshall County Commission President Kevin Overmyer told the Marshall County Council members Monday morning that there has been a change with CARES Act funding.
He said he attended a meeting last week in Indianapolis and eventually met with a Barnes and Thornburg representative about the changes. Overmyer said he and Emergency Management Agency Director Clyde Avery held further discussions with the Indiana Finance Authority.
“They are not going to approve any more projects, stated Overmyer. “What they want us to do is payroll. In the beginning, if you remember, if it was a budgeted item – you know if your payroll is budgeted at $50,000 and for COVID-19 if you had to pay overtime they would cover that overtime, but not what was budgeted. Now they want to get this money pushed out as quickly as possible.”
County officials are putting together the figures necessary to submit payroll and insurance benefits information from March 1 to the current pay period to the Indiana Finance Authority. The council would need to appropriate the money from the General Fund once that money is reimbursed to the county.
Overmyer added that he believes the two biggest projects approved by the county are still in good standing.
“I believe that our two projects, the mobile medical unit and the morgue, are still on track. And then we had some other things like the $75,000 for the rapid testing of COVID – we can get the machines, but we can’t get the cartridges for it so there’s no sense in doing that. Hopefully with the auditor’s help we can get this payroll and see where we’re at.”
In light of this new information, several CARES Act reimbursement-related additional appropriation requests were unanimously denied by the county council. The requests were for technology needs that would allow for remote work in several departments.
