The Clarion County commissioners have $7 million to spend but they aren’t certain what to do with all the money.
About one-half of the money from the 2021 federal American Rescue Plan has been received by the county and placed in an interest bearing account.
“We are still working with interim rules,” commissioner Ted Tharan said at the panel’s meeting Tuesday. “We have not received the final rules from the Treasury Department at this time. No one knows the final rules yet.”
Tharan said each municipality and county got money and the state got a “huge pile of money.” The county’s money is separate from the money the state received.
“We have to follow the federal guidelines when we are spending that money,” said Tharan. “The federal guidelines are different than the state guidelines. The ‘Donald (Trump) Dollars’ came through the state and we had to follow state guidelines on that. The ‘Biden Bucks’ came through the federal government so we need to follow their guidelines.”
“That is why it is so difficult to navigate through all of this,” Tharan added. “We have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure this out.”
The commissioners signed an addendum to an agreement Tuesday with the Pittsburgh-based Maher Duessel accounting firm to provide guidance to the county for the administration of pandemic relief funding. Tharan said the county could be reimbursed for the cost through the grant.
“We can be reimbursed for the time anyone in the county spends working on the plan,” he said.
Tharan added “there are a lot of restrictions and we don’t even know what the restrictions are for townships and boroughs yet.”
Tharan said air purification projects can qualify but sewage and water projects have to serve a certain demographic.
“There is also the category for lost revenue. We are working on that. That category is more liberal,” Tharan said. “Some of this money can be used for tourism.”
“We can build hard assets and they become the county property. We could use it to build a vaccination clinic or a testing site,” said Tharan. “We could use some or all of the money for that purpose.”
Other counties are experiencing similar problems.
“We have a lot of questions and other counties have questions,” said Tharan. “I have asked the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania to add a line on their web page so all 67 counties can see what other counties are doing.”
Unlike the previous program that had a one-year deadline, the new plan allows more time to develop projects.
“We have until 2024 to earmark that money and we have until 2026 to actually spend the money,” said Tharan. “As you can see it is quite complicated.”
Tharan said he thinks final rules could be ready in July.