BY TRACY LEE TATE
Times Staff Writer
LAKE BUTLER — At its regular February meeting, the Union County Board of County Commissioners received reports from County Coordinator Jimmy Williams about the status of county ARPA funds, recent and ongoing grants the county has been awarded and Florida Department of Transportation SCRAP grants for road work in the county.
According to the report, the county received $2,96 million in ARPA funding in February of 2021. Since that time the county has spent $641,835, including the recent vehicle purchase, and is obligated to pay $274,400. This leaves a balance of available funds of $2.04 million.
Money spent includes distributions to the towns of Raiford, Providence and Palestine, premium pay to county employees for working during the pandemic, COVID related supplies, repeaters for EMS, an ambulance retrofit, work and equipment for parks in the county, an overage on the recent FRDAP grant (caused by an increase in materials costs between the time funds were requested and the time they were actually purchased) and other infrastructure spending.
Most expenditures were discussed at more than one meeting before the spending was approved. Bids were taken as appropriate and all department were required to verify the need for their requests for equipment. Both inmate and in-county personnel have been used whenever possible to keep costs down.
Williams has been hard at work locating and applying for grants as well to fund a number of projects in the county. Grants that have been awarded, most of which have disbursed the funds and are ongoing, total more than $.5.5 million. These grants cover a number of areas, including a $430,500 Brownfields grant (a federal grant to fund cleanup of contaminated sites in the county for the purpose of resident safety and economic development); a FRDAP grant of $165,000 for recreation and renovation of the ballfields at O. J. Phillips Park, including a new ballfield; a $50,000 Small County Restoration Grant for the design phase of courthouse renovation; $750,000 from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for the additions to the Union County Agricultural Education Center; Enterprise Consulting ($25,000) and Marketing ($5,000) for making the county more visible to the rest of the state and U.S. to encourage economic development; $25,000 for the tire amnesty event; $1,62 million from the FDOT for sidewalk improvement for the schools in Lake Butler; and $963,698, also from FDOT, for the creation of a turn lane at the intersection of S.R. 121 and C.R. 231.
Williams also helped secure appropriations from the Florida Legislature totaling $4.4 million, including $550,000 for upgrades on courthouse security, $850,000 for the construction of a fire station in Providence and $3 million for the initial phases of the construction of a public safety complex adjacent to the courthouse.
FDOT has been generous to Union County in the form of SCRAP and SCOP grants, with four of five projects ongoing and one getting ready to begin. These grants are provided to small counties to help them with paving, widening and otherwise improving roads in the county which are not FDOT maintained. These grants include work on: C.R. 18 from the Columbia County line to S.R. 121 (survey done, work starting on alignment, plans 30% complete – estimated completion date 12/31/2026), C.R. 238 North from NE 111th Way to C.R. 229 North (plans 60% complete – estimated completion date 6/30/24), 92nd Street (design only, 30% complete and preparing Suwannee River Water Management District submittals for culvert extensions in the wetland areas), C.R. 229 South from the bridge to S.R. 121 North (approved by the board Feb. 20 – estimated completion date 12/31/2023).
The county still has needs and Williams is now working on securing more grants from a number of sources to meet them. It should be noted that all of the grants listed above have no requirement for the county to pay any matching funds, so there will be no cost to the county.
