Longmont stands to get more than $4.3 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES Act, funds through distribution agreements with Boulder and Weld counties and those counties’ other cities and towns.
The federal funds coming to Longmont and its neighboring Boulder and Weld counties’ communities are part of the amount Congress provided Colorado in its March coronavirus relief bill. In May, Gov. Jared Polis directed that $275 million be made available to cities and counties weren’t among the five Colorado counties with populations large enough to get direct CARES Act federal funding — to help the local governments in those other 59 counties cover their costs of responding to the pandemic , including expenses resulting from complying with state COVID-19 health orders and guidelines.
Longmont City Council on Tuesday night is to consider approving an intergovernmental agreement with Boulder County and Boulder County’s other cities and towns that’s to distribute $4,286,862 to Longmont to help offset the city’s coronavirus-response expenses.
That will be Longmont’s share of the more than $12.5 million of coronavirus-response funds going to Boulder County’s municipalities, according to the intergovernmental agreement report city staff has provided for Tuesday’s meeting.
A small part of far eastern Longmont lies within Weld County, and a separate agreement up for City Council approval Tuesday — one with that county’s government and its other municipalities — would earmark $16,260 as Longmont’s share of Weld’s distributions of more than $12.28 million in CARES Act funds to that county’s cities and towns, according to information city staff has provided Council.
While staff’s materials for Tuesday’s Council agenda packet did not include a detailed breakdown of Longmont city government’s coronavirus-related spending, Assistant City Manager Sandi Seader said in an interview that Longmont’s largest expense has been purchasing and providing personal protective equipment for employees, including first responders.
Longmont also has bought quantities of hand sanitizer and wipes, cleaning supplies, and plexiglass barriers and other facilities changes to try to reduce the disease’s spread as the city reopens buildings to the public, Seadeer said.
She said expenses have also included purchases of a number of laptop computers to enable some employees to work remotely from their homes, and overtime pay for some staff.
Boulder County and Weld County have held collaborative meetings with municipalities to determine funding methodology and each municipality must sign an agreement prior to July 7, Longmont staff reported to Council.
Erie, like Longmont, is split between Boulder and Weld counties. It is to receive $502,448 from Boulder County’s coronavirus-response distributions to municipalities, and $666,204 from Weld’s distributions.
According to the allocation table Longmont staff provided for Tuesday’s Longmont City Council meeting, the amounts scheduled to be distributed to Boulder County’s other cities and towns are: Boulder, $4,754,119; Jamestown, $13,353; Lafayette, $1,292,851; Louisville, $945,947; Lyons, $92,264; Nederland, $69,309; Superior, $585,869, and Ward, $7,369.
Other southwest Weld County municipalities scheduled to get shares of $12.28 million in coronavirus-response relief funding through that county’s intergovernmental agreement are: Dacono, $266,760; Firestone, $682,650; Frederick, $625,461; Mead, $217,097, and Platteville: $139,791.
In addition to the money being distributed to Boulder and Weld counties’ cities and towns, both those counties are retaining amounts for their county governments’ own coronavirus-response expenses and program..
Weld County has designated about $15.5 million for such non-municipal-relief funding, under that county’s intergovernmental agreement, according to Longmont’s staff. Boulder County has allocated about $15.3 million for its county government’s pandemic-response expenses.
Michelle Krezek, the Boulder County commissioners’ chief of staff said in an email that “there still are a lot of questions about eligible expenses and how expenses should be allocated across other funding sources – there is CARES money allocated to Public Health and Emergency Operations state agencies that could be available for counties, and of course, there are some FEMA funds which could fund some of the identified expenses.”
Krezek said, “The biggest outstanding question is reimbursement for personnel costs for staff who have been and will be substantially working on COVID. And, of course, since we can request reimbursement for expenses incurred through the end of the year, we don’t have any idea what will happen with a second wave of the virus this fall,” so the current county government allocation is “a work in progress.”
Krezek said Boulder County is looking to use the federal CARES Act funding to reimburse such expenses as: the costs of operating its Emergency Operation Center; material and equipment necessary to comply with public health orders in the county jail; personal protective equipment purchased by the Office of Emergency Management and provided to local governments, first responders, and health care providers; grants to local non-profit agencies to provide basic needs assistance to individuals; grants to food delivery organizations to provide supplemental food assistance to individuals; grants to community health providers; small-business assistance grants; information technology assistance to allow county employees to work from home, and costs associated with making county buildings compliant with public health orders.
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Longmont, other local governments to share in CARES Act funds - Longmont Times-Call
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