FOLEY - Earlier this year, the City of Foley was awarded $987,000 in Care Act Funds, a fund created to help municipalities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The monies must go towards COVID-19 related purchases or purchases that will assist municipalities navigate through the crisis. All money must be spent by Dec. 31.

Foley has already spent approximately $220,000 from the fund. Money has gone towards items such as hand sanitizer, face masks, and cleaning items to be utilized by all city facilities, with the largest portion being put towards the purchase and installation of UV lighting and ionization systems in HVAC systems within city owned properties. Foley Sports Tourism has requested an additional $10,000 go towards a promotional video highlighting steps taken to ensure the safety and health of event goers and participants.

City staff has worked to identify all other expenditures made due to COVID-19. After totaling the projects and purchases, approximately $41,000 of the funds remain.

“The idea is that remaining money would be left as a placeholder for payroll expenses,” said City Administrator Mike Thompson. “If the City of Foley has an employee test positive with the virus they’re sent home until they’ve recovered, and we keep track of the dollars associated with the pay that we pay them, and that can be reimbursable through this Cares Act Fund. I really can’t predict what that number’s going to be, so we’re putting the balance in there as a placeholder.”

A large potential purchase item includes virtual servers, which would allow city employees to work from home remotely if the need arose. Thompson wants to hold off from installing the servers until a concrete answer has been given on how much funds will remain after COVID-pay reimbursements. If enough monies are left, he states the city IT Department can install virtual servers in October or November.

Another potential use of the funds is remote meeting capability. Back in April, discussion began circulating about the future of hosting public meetings online via Zoom. No official decision has been made on remote meetings at this time; however city staff is researching what the cost might be.

“Once we see what the cost is going to be it’s certainly something that we could add into our Cares Act list,” Thompson said. “That’s one reason why I think that large dollar amount is something we’d want to hold back, because if for example being able to install remote meeting capabilities would cost us $20,000, I’d want to have that on hand, and council would just have to make a decision on the virtual servers and whether we’d want to spend that money or perhaps use a portion of our own General Fund balance to make that happen.”