Johnson County officials have OK’d spending what could be the last of the county’s COVID-19 relief money.
The Johnson County Board of Commissioners authorized the expenditures Monday from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, or ARPA. Funding is will be spent on the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office Training Center, installing fiber internet at the Johnson County Park and the Johnson County Community Foundation’s Early Care and Education Program.
This could be the last of the spending, but Tiffany Costley, county attorney, said the county won’t know what’s left of the ARPA funds until 2026, when the projects that are already funded will be finished.
Johnson County was awarded $30.7 million from ARPA, where half of the funds were received in 2021 and the other half were received in 2022, according to the ordinance. ARPA is a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package to respond to the pandemic and Indiana officials distributed $1.28 billion to communities.
Members of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners and County Council together served on an ad hoc ARPA Committee to decide how to spend the money. The funds came with stipulations that they be used for purposes including responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency, negative economic impacts of the emergency, off-setting lost government revenue and capital improvement projects.
On Monday, the commissioners authorized an amount up to $125,000 to fund the cost of materials and labor to install furniture in the training center and up to $350,000 for materials and labor for the center’s Culvert Crossing Project.
The commissioners also approved an amount up to $410,000 for materials and labor to install fiber internet at the Johnson County Park. Previously, ARPA funding was given to JCFiber to expand broadband services to underserved communities.
Rounding out the rest of the ARPA money, an amount not to exceed $500,000 was authorized to help fund the community foundation’s Early Care and Education Program.
County officials have been allocating ARPA funds throughout the last few years. The largest allocation was $10 million to build the behavioral health facility on Johnson Memorial Health’s Franklin campus.The facility broke ground last year and is expected to be completed in late 2024 or early 2025.
Around $6.5 million was also allocated for a shared building for the health department and coroner’s office that was officially dedicated and opened in July of this year at 95 S. Drake Road. Both county departments had long needed a larger space to provide for the public health needs of the growing county.
County officials also approved $1 million to start designs on the new community corrections building and renovated county highway department. The community corrections building will feature dozens of offices, bunks, classrooms and more and be used for community corrections, adult probation and court services staff, previously said Angela Morris, court services director and chief probation officer.
The county highway department complex will be an upgrade for the department and include new salt barn facilities. The ARPA committee also approved $1.2 million in funds to construct and relocate a new large salt barn, small salt facility and a brine tank pad.
The pickleball courts at Independence Park at 2100 S. Morgantown Road in Greenwood were also paid for using a portion of the county’s ARPA funds alongside a bridge project that will connect the parking lots between the new community corrections building and the sheriff’s training center at 1081 Hospital Road, Franklin.
Other expenditures for ARPA funds include:
- Emergency Management Agency radios
- Professional services for various projects
- Subdivision road improvements
- Casing pipe for I-69
- Construction for the Animal Shelter addition
- Local food pantry grants
- Worker retention incentives for county employees
- Funding for the Crisis Intervention Team
- Crisis Intervention Team Addition.