Counties, cities and townships across the state continue working to fight the coronavirus, but that fight comes with a cost.
Local communities are now asking Governor Whitmer to make sure they see a portion of the CARES Act funding coming to Michigan.
Both the response to the coronavirus and the recovery will cost money for local governments including Antrim County. They say any funding the state can provide from the expected four billion dollars it will receive from the cares act will help.
“We’re looking at any possibility that might come along. There’s a constantly building list of ideas of how do we deal with unknown and the best way to do that is go plan ahead even when you don’t know where the money is going to come from so that we’re ready to go,” said Public Information Officer Jeremy Scott.
Cadillac City Nanager Marcus Peccia says his city is currently in a comfortable financial position, but adds its important smaller communities see part of this funding.
“It’s at the local level where we are absolutely on those front lines, providing services to our residents. It’s still important that the ‘Cadillacs’ of Michigan also receive funding because we too have a very important mission that we need to be able to very adequately do and that is to provide services to our community,” said Peccia.
Garfield Township Supervisor Chuck Korn says the money would be a vital resource for what’s been an unexpected challenge.
“I think it’s important for particularly cities, counties, fire departments, that sort of thing to be able to recover some of these costs because they have fixed budgets and it would be very good for them to somehow come out of this financially healthy as well,” said Korn.
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