By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Commission Chair Ron Hirst said the Commission will take into consideration the information given at around 45 meetings facilitated around the county to get input from the public on how to spend federal COVID relief from the American Rescue Plan Act.
"We looked at about four or five different areas," Hirst said. "One of those was the housing, we're looking at housing, economic development, infrastructure and replacing lost revenue. There's some others that will come up as we begin this discussion and we will have some working sessions on this, when we get started."
It's important to note that the absolute final rule from the federal government on this isn't out yet.
"We need to look at this as to how we can utilize this in the best long-term interest," Hirst said. "Some of these will be cumbersome. Some of these will be a little hard to work through. It's more important that we look at the future and what these funds will allow us in the future."
County Administrator Randy Partington asked for help from former Reno County Administrator Gary Meagher and former Hutchinson City Manager John Deardoff in a consulting role with earlier disbursements of federal COVID money. Hirst didn't appear to be opposed to that idea, but he said it's still early.
"There is a tremendous amount of regulations and audits and where we can spend this money," Hirst said. "I think that's something that we will probably be looking at. Right now, we haven't started that process to really take serious about this."
The reason it hasn't started is because they wanted all the public input meetings to happen first so they knew what the public thought before even getting into the details.