Liberty Twp. has received $2.48 million, and the trustees plan to allocate $1.63 million for the fire department. Another $699,126 will be allocated for the police contract with the sheriff’s office during their meeting on Tuesday. A chunk of $121,938 will pay for things like touchless faucets and toilets in township buildings, some technology and other costs incurred dealing with the pandemic.
Early on in the pandemic if jurisdictions wanted to use the money for salaries a detailed accounting of hours spent working on battling the coronavirus was required. The Treasury decided police, fire and other safety service personnel are substantially dedicated to the pandemic so itemized bills are no longer required.
Trustee Board President Christine Matacic said the allocation is justified and prudent.
“My taxpayers are paying for this one way or another, at least if I’m getting money to support my salaries for my fire personnel and my deputies, that may mean that I don’t have to go to my taxpayers as often for a levy,” Matacic said. “So in essence their money from the federal government, it’s coming back to locals and it’s being used to where the local taxpayers will end up benefitting.”
There is a Dec. 31 deadline to spend the funds. In the original CARES plan there was $113,400 penciled in for 45 sets of turnout gear for the fire department. Trustee Tom Farrell said they were forced to erase that expense.
“The deadlines that are put on us for spending this CARES money are unrealistic, where there are other expenses that we’ve encountered, both current and future that we can’t include because we can’t get product in time to do so,” Farrell said. “Things like turnout gear which is a big one.”
He said now that they have freed up some money in the fire department by using the CARES money to reimburse some salaries, they might be able to buy the second set of gear using regular funds, which he said is crucial.
“When they go out on a call and the patient possibly has COVID, they’re not going to know after that, because of our HIPPA rules," Farrell said. “We don’t even know, but we have to come to back, we have to clean that gear, we can’t be part of the problem by spreading that virus. We have to be ready to go out on the next call and how do you do that.”
Initially Trustee Steve Schramm wanted to just send the money back to Washington. He has changed his tune, because whatever money they have not allocated by Nov. 20 will go back to Butler County for redistribution.
“I have had to do an about face on that,” he said. “I’m not saying my moral compass is totally correct right now, because as a conservative I’m not a fan of the how the federal government has allowed us to spend it, but I’d be foolish if I didn’t take advantage of it.”
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