To: Board of County Commissioners
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Prepared By:
prepared
Todd Weaver, Director, Finance
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presenter
Presenter: Todd Weaver, Director, Finance
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Subject:
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PUBLIC HEARING: Adoption of a resolution for supplemental budget appropriations for COVID-19 pandemic response
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Purpose and Request:
recommended action
The Board of County Commissioners is requested to adopt this supplemental appropriation resolution to enable the County to continue to expend funds to respond to and mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Funding included in this resolution relates to utilizing funds from the General Fund as well as receiving and spending funds in the Grant Fund from Federal rent assistance and State business assistance grant programs.
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Background and Discussion: During 2020, the County received funding from the Federal CARES Act to provide a wide range of programs, services, and payments to municipalities, schools, non-profits, business owners, and others to respond to the public health and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The County took full advantage of these funds and reimbursed a wide variety of expenditures and would like to continue to do so during 2021 as well due to the ongoing pandemic impacts. An appropriation from the General Fund balance will enable critical programs and efforts from last year to continue in 2021.
Preliminary discussions with the Board of County Commissioners identified the following program areas for pandemic relief during 2021. It is important that these programs continue to provide the necessary services to the community and vulnerable populations.
Vulnerable Populations - Programs continuing in 2021 with this funding include the hotel/motel voucher program, food assistance support, the cost of temporary Human Services staffing for pandemic-related services, as well as reimbursement for Judicial Services GPS monitoring services.
COVID-19 Testing and Tracing - Funding will also be provided to Tri-County Health as well as other community partners to continue the COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and other pandemic-related public health and vaccination efforts.
County Operations - Continued media and communications support around the pandemic as well as the cleaning, disinfecting, and social distancing protective measures and improvements at County facilities, and other pandmice-related employee leaves are included in this funding request.
Response and Preparation - An amount of this funding request will also be used to continue to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) for County employees as well as community partners in need and provide funding for possible storage of such PPE. The request also continues funding of data analysis and wastewater testing to determine trends in the transmission of the COVID-19 virus across the community.
Early, in 2021, the Federal government has made additional funds available for the Emergency Rental Assistance program included in the recently passed Continuing Resolution for 2021. The County is estimating that it will receive $9.8 million from this grant program. This will enable the County to continue to provide this assistance to residents into 2021.
In addition, the State of Colorado made additional business support grant funding available to local governments during a special session in December, 2020. It is not clear how much funding will be received by the County, but we are requesting an appropriation of $4.05 million at this time to ensure the County can issue these payments with sufficient appropriation authority to do so and continue to provide assistance to local businesses negatively impacted by the pandemic.
If any updated information is available prior to the public hearing, we will update the amounts with the Board prior to adoption of these resolutions.
Fiscal Impact: The fiscal impact of this supplemental appropriation resolution is an increase in the expenditure budget of the General Fund by $10.0 million and the Grant Fund by $13.9 million. The spending in the Grant Fund will be offset by grant funds received from the State and Federal governments.
Alternatives: The Board could elect not to adopt this supplemental appropriation resolution and use other current appropriations on COVID-19 response activities. This would, however, limit the funding for other items and operations included in the currently adopted 2021 budget.
Alignment with Strategic Plan:
☒Be fiscally sustainable
☒Provide essential and mandated service
☒Be community focused
Staff Recommendation: The Finance Department recommends adoption of this resolution outside of the normal quarterly budget review timeframe to ensure the orderly and expedient continuation of services and programs for the community related to mitigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Concurrence: In this section state whether there are others in addition to the requestor who concur with the recommendation.
Suggestion Motion(s): I move to adopt/not adopt the three (3) supplemental appropriation requests to amend the 2021 Budget to recognize additional revenues and continue to fund expenditures related to responding to and mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Resolution: Attach a copy of any recommended draft resolution.