By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Former Hutchinson City Manager John Deardoff has consulted along with former Reno County Administrator Gary Meagher on putting together a proposal for how Reno County will allocate the SPARK money distributed to it by the state from the federal government.
"The state of Kansas recieved $1.25 billion," Deardoff said. "They've distributed that around the state to each county, based on population for the most part. Reno County ended up with $12.6 million. Round one was really directed specifically at public entities, schools, cities, counties any taxing entities, here we included Hutch Rec and the library."
Deardoff said the school districts in particular have been eager to access those funds.
"It's important to get our kids back to school as soon as we can in a safe manner," Deardoff said. "Schools are looking at things like reimbursables for hand sanitizing stations, those kind of things. Really preparing themselves for distance learning or virtual learning. That's a big expense a lot of them are going to have is just being able to prepare students at home to be able to learn should schools get shut down again. There's been a lot of money driven to that. Subscriptions to these virtual learning programs, setting up classrooms with distance learning. Simple things like microphones for teachers that might be teaching with masks on and the list goes on."
There are more requests than the county has funds to disburse just among the public entities.
"We're actually just shy of a million dollars over the $12.6, which is a little bit surprising," Deardoff said. "We thought it would be under that. Over the last couple of days the USDs and all the entities have really looked at their submittals in trying to cut some of those down. Not only the USDs but the counties and the cities are going to be looking at the same thing."
The cuts were going to be made over the weekend, with a final proposal to go before the county commission on Tuesday so it can be filed by August 15.