County approves official CARES funding plan

Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

Guadalupe County Commissioners Court decided how it plans to spend a quarter of a million dollars in grant money related to the novel coronavirus.

In a unanimous approval, the court decided to move forward on CARES Act/COVID-19 purchasing requests as compiled by county Emergency Management Coordinator/Fire Marshal Patrick Pinder.

The plan identifies eligible costs in certain categories the Texas Division of Emergency Management has laid out for spending money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act’s Coronavirus Relief Fund. Texas’ $11 billion fund is to be used to make payments for specified uses to states and local governments.

Pinder submitted the form to the Texas District of Emergency Management on Friday.

“It shows the state what we’re going to be spending the money on,” he said. “We have until the 20th of December to update and change this.”

The plan includes such expenditures as $30,000 for a temporary employee in Pinder’s office to work on Guadalupe County’s response to COVID-19, about $210,000 in medical devices for the county, $20,000 for employee COVID-19 testing, and money for test kits, according to the spending plan provided on the county’s website.

Money is available for ultraviolet air sterilization equipment for certain county buildings, temperature screening kiosks and testing site equipment.

Guadalupe County pledged to spend $872,000 to help county school districts with their COVID responses.

Also budgeted but not approved Tuesday afternoon was an estimated $400,000 expenditure for laptop computers to the sheriff’s office and other first responders.

Discussions Tuesday on bids for up to 63 computers and corresponding accessories hinged on whether the top bid provided the best equipment for the job, what would be needed to make the bid equipment work and whether it all could be delivered by a federal deadline of the end of December.

Court members voted unanimously to put off the expenditure to make sure they make the right decision without CARES-related and other restrictions.

Though county officials would need to stick fairly closely to the nearly $2.53 million in expenditures listed in the plan, there was some wiggle room. It did not etch in stone funds the county will spend, County Judge Kyle Kutscher said.

“This is plan,” he said. “This is the document that gets submitted as the prospective projects we’re working on. Everything might not happen that way.”

Dalondo Moultrie is the assistant managing editor of the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail him at dalondo.moultrie@seguingazette.com 

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