More than $140,000 in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act was spent this year to give county employees extra money for working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Brown County Council approved an ordinance to amend the county’s salary ordinance for 2021 to account for an additional $1,000 that 123 full-time county employees received before the end of the year at their Dec. 20 meeting.
There were also four permanent part-time employees who received $500. The money was distributed in a lump sum for premium pay for work done during the pandemic, according to county officials.
Elected officials, including council members and the Brown County Commissioners, also received $1,000 one-time stipends for working through the pandemic. That $18,000 expense was paid from a payroll line in the county’s Wellness Fund. Elected officials cannot be paid using ARPA funds, according to directives from the Indiana State Board of Accounts.
The commissioners also approved the ordinance amending the salary ordinance for this year.
The 2022 salary ordinance was also approved at the December county council meeting and included a premium pay increase of an additional $2 per hour for essential employees in county health, law enforcement and emergency management departments whose work is tied directly to responding to COVID-19. For example, jailers at the Brown County Law Enforcement Center who are tasked with testing incoming inmates for COVID-19 will receive this raise.
The payroll and claims processor in the auditor’s office, non-merit law enforcement center employees and non-elected employees in the commissioners administrative office will also receive the premium pay.
The premium pay is set to adjust annually as council implements future cost of living raises so that there is no additional expense to the county in four years when ARPA funding will no longer be available.
“That means when they give a cost of living raise the premium pay amount will go down. So much of it will be from ARPA and so much of it will be from county,” explained county Human Resources Coordinator Melissa Stinson.
“At the end of four years we will be weaned off to normal.”
Last year, the county council approved a three percent cost of living raise in 2022 for all county employees not paid through state funding sources.
A total of $366,720 has been committed from ARPA funding to cover the one-time bonuses for the 127 county employees this year and then the hourly premium pay increases next year for essential workers for the next four years, according to Auditor Julia Reeves.
Earlier this year it was announced that Brown County would receive nearly $3 million in relief funding from ARPA to help with the local response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The amount the county is getting through the ARP is almost six times more than the $494,248 the county received in CARES Act funding last year. The ARPA money will be split into two payments. The county received its first payment this summer, totalling around $1.4 million. The second round of funding is expected to arrive early this year.
Local governments can use the money for a number of expenses, including revenue shortfalls; responding to negative impacts on housing, nonprofits and small businesses due to the pandemic; paying salaries of essential workers; paying for necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure; or capital investments in public facilities to meet pandemic operational needs.
Spending so far
Before distributing any of the ARPA funding, the commissioners set up objectives for how the money should be spent.
In November it was announced that the objectives for the first round of money would be to provide funding for projects that “develop and advance essential infrastructure improvements.”
At the December county council meeting, President Dave Redding asked if the bonuses for employees from ARPA money was reviewed by the county’s legal counsel Barnes and Thornburg. Stinson and Commissioner Diana Biddle said last month that they received confirmation the additional pay was OK under ARPA guidelines from Barnes and Thornburg and would provide a copy of the email saying so to the council.
“I am making sure I have a legal basis on whatever decision I make — yes or no — on what is in front of me,” Redding said.
“That is what I am going after. I personally think we need to help our employees. That is my personal belief. As a council we have to do the oversight of what was done or should be done or in the process of being done.”
Stinson said they also worked with the Indiana State Board of Accounts on giving premium pay for county employees within the ARPA guidelines. Eligible county employees for the one-time stipends were paid for 100 hours of work during the pandemic.
“The $1,000 was for everyone who came in and worked during the time of COVID shutdown in 2020 to now,” Stinson said.
“The commissioners voted to do the bonus because everyone had to be a part of COVID.”
As the HR coordinator, Stinson worked closely with the commissioners and the auditor’s office determining how the ARPA money could be used to pay employees. The county council then had to amend the salary ordinance for this year to reflect the additional money employees received for working during the pandemic.
The amendment was approved for this year’s salary ordinance with council member Judy Swift-Powdrill and Scott Rudd abstaining.
Rudd also voted against the 2022 salary ordinance, which included a three percent raise for county council members. All county employees will receive the same raise this year.
At the Dec. 8 commissioners meeting, resident Sherrie Mitchell questioned the commissioners about paying for the bonuses using ARPA funding.
“I think that we have other needs that are much more pressing,” Mitchell said, noting infrastructure needs in the county like better sewer systems and broadband internet access.
Biddle added that the commissioners had been advised by state officials to avoid using ARPA money on broadband internet due to the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden recently signed into law that sets aside billions of dollars to improve broadband internet throughout the country.
“I am thinking right now just in what I am seeing in requests we will be assigning close to $1 million to infrastructure out of this first half of the grant,” Biddle said of ARPA.
The commissioners also approved giving another $25,000 in ARPA funding to Helmsburg Regional Sewer District at the Dec. 8 commissioners meeting. The money will be used to purchase property to expand the sewer plant in Helmsburg.
The one and a half acres will be used to expand the plant so that HRSD can extend service to two property owners who are “in desperate need for getting sewers to them,” HRSD member Kyle Myers said on Dec. 8.
“We said we would start with that and then further look at how much further can we expand to maximize our plant and doing potential improvement to the existing plant to get it by a few more years until we can do a bigger expansion,” he said.
Myers continued that the property will allow for a “decent expansion” of the current plant since it is already not utilizing much of the property now. Discussions on acquiring more property to expand will happen at a later date, Biddle added.
The HRSD property purchase is the only other ARPA expense the commissioners have formally approved so far.
Other requests have been submitted for ARPA funding for projects from Brown County Water Utility and the Brown County Regional Sewer District. Another infrastructure project to be partially funded with ARPA funds is the stormwater project in Helmsburg. ARPA funds will go towards paying $300,000 to finish that project, including paving and
In November, Biddle said that public comments would be taken on the projects to be funded with the second distribution, which is expected to arrive in the first few months of this year.
