Will Berrien County lose out on any of the nearly $30 million in federal COVID funds it received now that Congress is clawing back unused COVID dollars? Berrien County Administrator Brian Dissette tells us the board of commissioners took steps in May to prevent that from happening by locking in more than $15 million in building and maintenance projects.
“We feel confident that our projects are set and will be funded with the ARPA funds that we received, but knowing that there was this potential claw back out on the horizon, we were thrilled that our board of commissioners was willing to adopt recent resolutions that just further commit the use of the ARPA funds towards deferred maintenance projects,” Dissette said.
Dissette said the county has “an abundance of documentation” of how it planned to use the federal money.
“We’ve got a high degree of confidence that we won’t face any kind of claw back from the federal government as part of that debt ceiling negotiation.”
The county board worked with a construction firm to prioritize needed projects and get bid packages put together quickly before the federal government started moving on the claw back. Dissette raised the issue with them last month while the county commission considered how to approach a backlog of needed work. He notes with the bidding climate difficult right now, a lot of that work still won’t start for at least a year.
