Covid-relief requests total $20 million, JPs told

FAYETTEVILLE — Washington County’s justices of the peace will be looking at up to $20 million in requests for federal covid relief money, with the county having earmarked just $2.3 million in funding.

The Quorum Court’s County Services Committee on Monday heard a report on the initial review of applications for funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. The panel took no action on the requests. County Judge Patrick Deakins said his office will be sending out more detailed information on the requests to the justices of the peace beginning today.

The county received about $46 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds. The Quorum Court agreed last year to make available about $2.3 million in funding to nongovernmental groups and set up an application process.

The application period closed at the end of October, and the applications received were sent to the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District in Harrison to be reviewed for eligibility for the federal funds.

According to information from the county, there were 46 applications received during the process with the total amount requested approaching $30 million.

Catherine Baker with the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District, said the district narrowed the applications down to 11 that met the guidelines of their review. Those 11 applications included requests totaling about $20 million.

The initial applications ranged in size from $10,000 to more than $8 million and come from long-established charities like the Ronald McDonald House and the Lions Club to organizations including the Washington Water Authority, which submitted four requests ranging from $2.4 million to more than $8 million. The Washington Water Authority’s requests total about $20 million.

The distribution process for the American Rescue Plan Act funds was a bone of contention for several months

with some nonprofit groups noting the Quorum Court awarded money to some groups without any process in place to accept and evaluate requests. The county allocated about $2.9 million to Upskill NWA for a jobtraining program to address shortages of qualified employees in health care and another $315,000 to Returning Home, a Springdale nonprofit group helping men who have been incarcerated reintegrate with the community.

The use of relief funding for an expansion of the county’s Detention Center has also raised questions. The justices of the peace in December approved two ordinances appropriating about $18.8 million in relief money for an expansion of the Detention Center.

Some justices of the peace and community activists have questioned whether the jail project is an eligible use for the funds. A petition drive aimed at blocking the two spending ordinances failed to gather enough signatures in the allotted time to force a special election on the ordinances.

Also on Monday, the justices of the peace discussed the need for a county emergency operations center.

John Luther, the county’s emergency services director, told the justices of the peace the office is now housed in a temporary location in Lincoln, using a satellite training facility of the Arkansas Fire Academy.

Luther said the county had an emergency operations center in what is now the Northwest Arkansas Crisis Stabilization Unit. When that building was designated for use for the crisis stabilization unit, his office and the emergency operations center were moved to the county’s annex building, but that space is now being used by Circuit Judge Diane Warren.

Luther said Washington County stands alone among the state’s larger counties in having no permanent emergency operations center. He said the center is used to bring together and coordinate different agencies and governments in time of emergencies like tornadoes or flooding. The center would be used at other times for training and to provide conference and office space.

“The center is the hub of business related to emergencies,” Luther said. “It helps the responders do the jobs they need to do out in the field.”

Luther said an emergency operations center should have room to house all of the local emergency response agencies and additional space for state or federal agencies that may need to have people in the county to deal with an emergency situation.

Deakins said the county needs to address the issue of having no permanent facility for emergency management and after some discussion told the justices of the peace he saw enough of a consensus among them to begin working on the project. The justices of the peace took no action on the matter Monday.