CARES Act

Post date: Nov 05, 2020 3:1:15 PM

We applied for the second round of funding being released by the state under the CARES Act. This is used to cover unanticipated and unbudgeted costs related to COVID. This includes equipment and operations for remote work, personal safety, conduct of municipal operations in different ways (think Town meeting, elections, Library curbside pickup, etc.) In addition, we have been able to fully reimburse the Affordable Housing Trust for the funds they made available for rental support and also made sure they have additional funds on hand to make available if the need expands before the end of the year. Further, we have been able support the Williamstown Youth Center expanded services as they have adjusted to support families navigating through hybrid and remote learning and families who may have different work conditions due to COVID. Lastly, we have been able to support the expanded programming and services that Willinet has been providing.

Our Accounting staff did an outstanding job compiling all of the known expenses and projecting to year end, including the supplemental items as noted above and incorporating them into the preliminary application. We submitted at the end of day on a Thursday and the full $184,000 of the request was in our bank account Monday evening. The process is that the state is aggressively pushing out the funds to communities and then we subsequently report back at monthly intervals the uses of those funds. At the end of the year, we do a final reconciliation and return unused funds or make one more application for more.