With roughly $10 million in unallocated and unspent COVID-19 relief money left to dole out, the Penobscot County Commissioners are in the third and final round of awarding funding through the county’s Commissioner’s Fund.
In each round of the Commissioners’ Fund grant program, each of the three commissioners has $300,000 to distribute to organizations tackling issues in their districts, according to the county website. The award sizes fall between $5,000 and $50,000 and are reviewed before being presented by all three commissioners.
The Commissioners’ Fund grants are intended to catch organizations that may have missed previous opportunities to apply for funding, or may be for-profit organizations that didn’t meet the application rules for the county’s beneficiary grant program.
While county officials are nearing the end of its pandemic relief funding distribution process and have been steadily giving awards for months, Bangor officials have just begun combing through and making decisions on the 60 requests for funding it received years after first receiving the one-time lump sum.
The county’s remaining $10 million makes up about one-third of the $29.5 million it received after Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, Wendy Dana, Penobscot County’s grant manager, said. All the money must be earmarked by Dec. 31, 2024, and used by Dec. 31, 2027.
The most recent round of pandemic relief fund checks, given during the commissioners’ June 13 meeting, total roughly $433,000. That includes 17 Commissioners’ Fund awards across all three districts.
The town of Levant received $50,000 to purchase Jaws of Life equipment, a hydraulic rescue tool used by first responders to remove victims from vehicles or other small spaces after a crash.
The county also awarded $50,000 to the town of Newport to expand the town’s recreation facilities, dock and walking path.
The Orono Economic Development Corporation received $6,500 to cover landscaping and water line repair costs at the corporation’s nature center.
Allowed uses for the money include responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its financial repercussions, providing premium pay or grants for essential workers who continued to work through the pandemic, to supplement government revenue lost during the pandemic, or making investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
The county can also give subrecipient funding awards, which begin at $25,000, but those are “on a case by case basis now since we are at the final stage of ARPA awards,” Dana said.
The county’s subrecipient grant program is for nonprofits, other organizations administering funds through a fiscal agent and towns that have been harmed by the pandemic, according to the county’s website. While the awards may be larger, the program is also more competitive and has rigorous administrative requirements and an applicant must meet specific criteria to be eligible.
The commissioners are scheduled to announce more ARPA awards at their next meeting on Tuesday morning.
