Council approves $86K for COVID-19 efforts in city, county

SBJ photo by Kathryn Hardison

Councilman Andrew Lear and other council members participate in the April 20 Springfield City Council meeting through videoconferencing.

Last edited 1:05 p.m., April 21, 2020

Springfield City Council last night unanimously passed an emergency bill authorizing a partnership with Greene County to allocate a collective $86,000 for COVID-19 efforts.

The agreement calls on the city of Springfield to allocate up to $50,000 and Greene County to issue up to $36,206 for joint purchases of COVID-19 supplies, equipment and services. The funds will be used by the Springfield-Greene County Office of Emergency Management, according to bill documents.

City Finance Director David Holtmann said at the council meeting the $50,000 already was included in the city’s budget as a contingency line item. He also said the Finance Department was working to identify ways to reduce the city’s current spending to help mitigate the loss of potential sales tax revenues due to the stay-at-home order. The agreement also requires the city of Springfield funding to only be put toward expenses within city boundaries.

Speaking in a virtual meeting with other members, Councilman Andrew Lear asked if council should anticipate any further COVID-19-related funding requests or allocations through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. City Manager Jason Gage said he was unable to anticipate further funding at this time.

“Part of the reason we’re asking to establish this partnership with Greene County is really to be a little bit more agile in case we do get a request that's directly related to COVID-19 response to our community and need to get funding fairly quickly,” Gage said. “At this point, I wouldn’t anticipate that we would spend all of these collective dollars. But if so, if there’s a need for further funding, we’ll certainly come back and make that ask of council.”

At the beginning of the meeting, Springfield-Greene County Health Department Director Clay Goddard told council his department was beginning to see COVID-19 cases flatten out in the area. However, Goddard said the community isn’t done fighting the pandemic.

The Health Department has recorded 92 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and has 38 active cases, according to data provided by Goddard last night. Greene County has reported eight deaths.