photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured Thursday, July 7, 2016.

The City of Lawrence will receive a $446,000 grant as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

The CARES Act allocated $2 billion of additional funding to cities through the Community Development Block Grant program to prevent, prepare for and respond to coronavirus, according to a city staff memo to the City Commission. As part of the commission’s meeting Tuesday, City Manager Craig Owens said the city expected additional funds to be provided but that the grant was a start to meet the city’s challenges.

“The needs here locally are substantial,” Owens said. “They will continue to be substantial as we move through this and move into recovery.”

The funds can be used in various ways, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the CDBG program, provides several examples on its website. Those include constructing medical facilities for testing and treatment, supporting businesses manufacturing medical supplies, constructing a group living facility to centralize patients undergoing treatment, and to carry out job training of health care workers and technicians, among others.

As part of its meeting, the commission passed a resolution authorizing the city manager to make needed expenditures under the direction of the community’s Unified Command to address the virus. The City of Lawrence, Douglas County, LMH Health and the Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health implemented a Unified Command system to respond to the virus.

In response to questions from the commission about how the $446,000 would be spent, Owens said efforts were currently concentrated on addressing the city’s more vulnerable populations, including the homeless and those living in shelters. He said that included making sure those people had access to meals.

“There are a lot of private dollars and not-for-profit dollars that are going toward this, but we think that there are going to be significant challenges that are going to need to be addressed,” Owens said. “And we think this is a starting point for some of those.”

Commissioners indicated they agreed that the funds should go first to support the city’s most vulnerable populations.

Owens said the city expected to receive additional federal funding via the CARES Act, but he did not yet have particulars. The resolution also directs the city manager to pursue and apply for additional federal and state grant opportunities to assist with meeting Unified Command objectives and to provide regular updates to the City Commission on those efforts and expenditures.