At the Kosciusko County American Rescue Plan Act Committee meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 13, are from left: Committee member and Kosciusko County Councilwoman Sue Ann Mitchell, Committee member and Kosciusko County Commissioner Cary Groninger and Committee member and Kosciusko County Council President Mike Long. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — The process for construction of a public safety communications tower at Sidney moved along on Wednesday, Sept. 13.

Following approval by Kosciusko County Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 12, the Kosciusko County American Rescue Plan Act Committee approved spending $400,000 of the county’s ARPA funds on constructing the tower.

The expenditure still needs to be OK’d by the Kosciusko County Council. The 180-foot tower is meant to supplement the other three towers in the county.

Kosciusko County Commissioner and ARPA Committee member Cary Groninger noted “we have some areas, especially down in that Eel River valley … (which) didn’t have the coverage we would like to see for our first responders and public safety people.”

“So pretty much the commissioners had asked that the ARPA (committee) would look at funding a portion of that tower,” he said.

The county will have a memorandum of understanding with Sidney to put the tower at its wastewater plant. Leaders plan to use Economic Development Income Tax funds to cover the remainder of the tower and its equipment costs.

Groninger noted leaders had already approved using some ARPA money to allow Kosciusko REMC to build fiber out to Sidney for the tower.

Wagon Wheel, Other Requests

The committee had four other requests it considered at the meeting, coming from the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts, Joe’s Kids, Kosciusko County Senior Services and the Kosciusko Community YMCA.

However, committee members noted there was only a limited amount of the county’s remaining ARPA money to deal with.

With some ARPA funds left over from allocations made for ARPA administrative expenses, radios for first responders and other mainly county-controlled ARPA projects, leaders had less than $576,000 to spend out of the $15,433,397 the county originally received from the federal government. Whereas the four remaining requests totaled $1,137,203.

The committee opted to deny Senior Services’ request for a new bus as the organization had already received county ARPA monies.

They agreed to give $350,000 of the remaining money to Wagon Wheel for building repairs and $121,503 to Joe’s Kids for lighting in the parking lot and driveway of the organization’s new facility at First United Methodist Church of Warsaw’s Connection Campus on West Lake Street. Those both were only part of the organizations’ original requests.

Kosciusko County Council President and ARPA Committee member Mike Long and Kosciusko County Councilwoman and ARPA Committee member Sue Ann Mitchell also agreed to grant part of the YMCA’s request, giving it $100,000 for security equipment at its planned new facility at the former Madison Elementary School gym in Warsaw. Groninger abstained from voting because of his connection to the project.

In other business, the committee:

• Approved allowing Combined Community Services to spend $4,457 of ARPA funds left over from a previous allocation on wrapping several vehicles.