By Mike Kruzman / news@whmi.com

Livingston County has fulfilled its requirement for closing out an early-pandemic grant opportunity.

At the Board of Commissioner’s latest meeting, a closeout public hearing was held for Community Development Block Grant funding that came from the federal CARES Act. County Planning Director Kathleen Kline-Hudson shared information on the grant and what they were able to achieve with it during the hearing. The grant was applied for in the fall of 2020 and was to be used for prevention, mitigation and response to COVID-19, specifically for health care equipment, public services, salary reimbursement, and other COVID-related CDBG-eligible costs. Additionally, those costs had to have been incurred no later than December 31st, 2020.

Kline-Hudson said that counties were the only entity eligible for the funding, with allocation determined by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and limited to municipalities and non-profit organizations. Livingston County was allotted $370,302, but Kline-Hudson said that due to entities that might have been eligible for a piece of it being already reimbursed through other grants, they weren’t able to allocate 100-percent of it. In total, they were able to allocate $176,823. Kline-Hudson said she would have loved nothing more than to allocate the full amount, but after repetitive letters and phone calls, this was all they could get to come forward.

Kline-Hudson said that they were able to disseminate funds to the Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency, Livingston County Catholic Charities, Livingston County Facility Services, and 8 local units of government out of the County’s 19.

No comment was made at the public hearing.