Wellington Council delay dispersing funds from the American Rescue Plan Act
by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — The Wellington City Council awarded six tourism grants to non-profit businesses at the Tuesday night meeting but delayed the approval of funding through the American Rescue Plan act.
The first grant in question is the 2022 Wellington Travel & Tourism Grant that the Chamber awards to nonprofits in town every year. There’s usually $10,000 to go around and the primary beneficiaries are the two local museums, but the Wellington Heat and several other companies were included this year.
Here are the six nonprofits under consideration:
- Chisolm Trail Museum
- Depression Glass Museum
- Sumner County Historical & Genealogical Society
- The Wellington Rec Commission
- Wellington Public Library
- Wellington Heat
After unanimously approving those awards, the discussion quickly derailed when the Council saw the dollar amounts requested from the American Rescue Plan Act funding.
The City of Wellington was awarded $1.2 million through the American Rescue Plan Act to assist the City and local businesses financially recover from the pandemic. The City planned to use almost $368,000 through this Travel and Tourism Grant to recover lost revenue for each of the above nonprofits and Family Tree Resource Center/5 Sisters Mercantile. The rest of the money was designated for other city projects.
Councilmember Dodds complained that the figures were far too high when he didn’t know exactly what the funds were to be used for nor what the maximum award possible was. City Manager Shields pointed out to him that every applicant (with the exception of the Heat) provided an itemized list of their business’ losses and a description of their intentions with the funds. Here were the total requests:
Every application was provided on pages 3-19 of the agenda for the Council Meeting if you would like to read it for yourself.
The Council moved to table further discussion of the American Rescue Plan Act reimbursements until the next meeting. Presumably, to give them time to read.
After that discussion, Jan Grace from Cowley’s Sumner Campus provided her monthly update with some key highlights.
The school’s billboard that blew over is set to be repaired and replaced by Lamar Advertising. Additionally, they’ll host the first round of their ever more-popular robotics competition later this month, which isn’t open to the public, but the larger competition in April will be.
She also announced that Senator Roger Marshall will host a town hall meeting in the community room on Saturday, March 12 from 8 to 8:45 a.m. So, if you’d like to make your thoughts known to your elected representative, he’ll be there to listen to you.
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The meeting continued with two unanimous approvals for community spaces.
•The first was to assist in moving the cannons currently located at Heritage Park to the front of the Chisolm Trail Museums. The cannons need to be moved because of the Heritage Park renovation project. The Chisholm Trail Museum officials accepted the cannons that will be parked across the street from the Sumner County Court House.
•The second was a street closure request for the Eisenhower Color Run on April 29 on College St from Plum to Vantage Point East Driveway. The street will be closed off on that day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to give space to the kiddos in the run as well as providing parking for the food trucks invited.
Finally, the meeting concluded with three successful resolutions.
•The Council completed the contract to accept $634,706 from the Kansas State Department of Commerce’s Small Cities Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). These funds will go towards the Plum Street waterline project.
The City will pay $18,800 to H Excavating, LLC of Mulvane to demolish the properties at 1405 North B Street and 1102 East Lincoln Ave.
•The last resolution updated the language in the City’s purchasing policy to allow city departments to make more expensive purchases without Council approval. The costs of basic supplies have risen over the years such that City departments regularly make purchases over $2,500.
Under the former policy, every one of those purchases would require council approval, which puts a heavy delay on routine supplies. This resolution just increases that amount by $5,000.
The meeting adjourned following that vote.
