The Garvin County Board of Commissioners has begun to narrow down how they would like to use the more than $5.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds that have been allocated to the county, and renovations and repairs to the county fairgrounds are at the top of their list.
The board is considering updates to buildings at the fairgrounds including replacing leaking roofs, adding heat and air conditioning, remodeling the existing kitchen area and adding shower facilities.
County officials say those renovations would allow the fairground buildings to be used for PPE storage, mass testing and immunization clinics, and to stage distribution of medicines and PPE in the county. Updating the kitchen would offer a place to distribute food in emergency situations, and the addition of shower facilities would help the site to qualify as a Red Cross shelter for county residents in emergency situations such as tornado damage or winter storms where there are utility outages.
The improvements would also benefit the county fair, livestock shows, and other events held at the fairgrounds, creating a positive impact on economic recovery for the county.
“It’s not just a fair barn,” Commissioner Randy Chandler said during the board’s regular meeting on Jan. 3. “We use it for a lot of things.”
The ARPA funds are part of the pandemic relief package passed by Congress last year, and they come with strict guidelines for how they can be spent. The funds are designed to allow state, county and municipal governments to respond to the public health and economic emergency, provide premium pay to essential workers, replace revenue lost due to the pandemic, and make necessary investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.
In September the Board of Commissioners hired consulting firm Witt O’Brien to assist county officials in identifying eligible expenditures and ensure projects followed federal guidelines.
The county has already received half of the ARPA funds—nearly $2.7 million— with the remainder expected to be distributed later this year.
During the Jan. 3 meeting the board authorized County Clerk Lori Fulks to secure a design plan for the improvements the county would like to make to the fairgrounds. Those plans will be used by Witt O’Brien to assess which projects qualify for ARPA funding and which improvements the county would need to find alternate funding for.
The board has already approved some smaller expenditures from the ARPA funds, including constructing a covered awning area at the county health department for testing and vaccination and purchasing an automated blood bank analyzer to be used at the Pauls Valley hospital (Southern Plains Medical Center of Garvin County). The lab analyzer, which is estimated to cost between $50,000-$60,000, would be county property designated for use at the hospital.
Hospital officials requested the analyzer during a regular meeting last fall. Among other functions, it can be used to match donor plasma containing COVID-19 antibodies, aiding convalescent plasma treatments for COVID-19 patients locally.
