photo by: Screenshot of Douglas County Commission work session

The Douglas County Commission met for a work session Wednesday, June 15, where the group began to sort through nearly 100 requests for more than $100 million in COVID relief funding.

Douglas County leaders have started reviewing local organizations’ requests for American Rescue Plan Act funding, and they’ve identified some proposals that might be at the top of their list.

On Wednesday, the County Commission held the first of at least two work sessions dedicated to reviewing the requests for the county’s remaining ARPA funds. County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said the number of funding requests was “overwhelming.” There were more than 100 applicants, she said, and their requests for funding totaled more than $100 million.

That sets up some tough choices for commissioners, because the county only has around $21 million in ARPA funding left to allocate.

On Wednesday, the commission was only looking at requests that didn’t come from county government departments. Those requests alone add up to more than $63 million. The commission will review the requests from county departments at a future work session.

The commission didn’t make any final decisions on Wednesday, because it doesn’t take action during work sessions, but commissioners had some ideas for which projects might be their top priorities.

All three commissioners agreed that housing-related proposals were generally at the top of their lists. That was especially true for Commissioner Shannon Reid. Her top priorities included a $3.3 million request from Tenants to Homeowners to develop or rehabilitate about 70 units of supportive service housing for people experiencing homelessness, as well as an $850,000 request from Lawrence Habitat for Humanity to help purchase 10 acres of infill land on Kasold Drive and create an economically diverse neighborhood.

Commissioner Patrick Kelly said that he also liked a proposal from The Sexual Trauma and Abuse Care Center — $184,500 to help the agency move into a larger office.

The commissioners had some questions about a few of the projects, and they asked county staff to follow up on those in the next week. One question was related to Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center’s nearly $6 million request for a supportive and rehabilitative permanent housing project. Kelly said he wanted more details about how that money would be spent — on purchasing land, building housing or for other purposes.

One thing commissioners agreed on was that more conversation was needed. Plinsky said that in addition to discussing the ARPA requests at its work session next week, the commission might be able to continue the discussion in its regular business meeting on the same day. She said the commissioners could also meet on June 29 if they felt they needed additional time to start making decisions.

“This is an exciting day, I think, for Douglas County,” Plinsky said. “This is something that we’ve put a lot of work into to get us to this point, and that the community has put a lot of work in to prepare proposals for us to consider.”