FAYETTE COUNTY, WV (WOAY) – Since the pandemic started, local governments have spent thousands on PPE that wasn’t in their budget.
“[We’ve bought] PPE for the police department, the fire department, the street department,” said town superintendent Matt Diederich. “We’ve done some things at Town Hall some chemicals, cleaning chemicals, done some things technology-wise because we are doing Zoom meetings and town council meetings.”
Since the virus wasn’t something governments could predict, PPE wasn’t in the budget.
“Without this money, we’d have to make some cuts somewhere, maybe a vital thing we need for the community,” said Diederich. “It’s definitely helped with that.”
Smaller local governments have made claims of ~$1,000 in spending each month. Larger governments claimed over 100 times as much.
“We’ve spent the money on PPE for all our first responders,” said deputy director of the Beckley-Raleigh County Emergency Services Richard Filopek. “We have spent money to enhance our communications to our first responders along with helping the local health department.”
Beckley-Raleigh County Emergency Services will receive over $136,396 from the CARES Act. Meanwhile, the City of Beckley received $1.2 million.
Smaller governments like Fayetteville will get $4,822 dollars while Ansted expects only $1,098.
“Each month moving forward throughout the end of the year, [applications are due on] the 21st,” said Diederich. “We have to get all the receipts, we have to figure out the amount and turn in the receipts and then we’ll have to justify. We have to go on the website and fill out expenses and submit the receipts.”
This month, West Virginia awarded over a billion dollars in grants to help with coronavirus response.
