The Marion County Board has agreed to give each of the fire protection districts in the county $10,000 apiece.
The fire chiefs had approached the county board earlier about receiving some of the COVID relief money given to the county because they were emergency response agencies that assisted during the pandemic and had their own funds limited by reliance on property taxes. At a later meeting, Board Member Steve Whritenour asked the board to consider the request.
The board will take $60,000 of the amount from its CURES funding received by the federal government with Supervisor of Assessments Mark Miller providing the other $20,000 from mapping funds in his office as a thank you to the 911 emergency system for its help on the recent flyover for new property assessment maps.
Building Committee Chair Dr. Creighton Engel says the $562,000 CURES money was the first round of funding from the federal government that had not been allocated.
“These were no strings attached funds. So the county can use them for basically anything they wanted. We have been holding on to those funds right now and are going to be utilizing some of those but also hopefully will be building up a better contingency fund for the budget. That was one of our goals. With the economy the way it’s going and things like this, we want to have some rainy day money as well.”
The county board wants to invite the eight fire protection districts to their next meeting to present the checks.
