Commissioners take action on recovery, CARES Act, and ODOT funds

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. (Free Press) — The Oklahoma County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) held their regular meeting on Monday morning, lasting only 20 minutes.

The Board debated joining the state-wide association of County Commissioners, and made decisions about reimbursing the County’s employee benefits program with CARES funds.

The BoCC went on to approve paying for environmental services for a project by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.

The Commissioners then recessed to executive session where they privately discussed pending litigation and held personnel reviews for some department heads. Executive session lasted for nearly an hour.

Marty Peercy reports Local government

Commissioners Association

After a couple of months of putting the decision off, the Commissioners voted on Monday to join the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma.

The Association is, as the name suggests, an affiliation of County Commissioners from most of the 77 counties in Oklahoma.

Debate among the BoCC consisted mainly of questioning the value of paying dues to be a member of the Association. District 3 Commissioner Kevin Calvey said that the Commissioners of the larger counties in Oklahoma have consistently complained that they don’t get nearly as much out of the organization as the smaller population counties.

Via telephone, Free Press spoke to Maughan about the organization.

Maughan said that the meetings he has attended didn’t offer much value to him as a Commissioner of a county with professional staffs for engineering and other skilled departments. Many rural counties don’t have those resources.

Blumert said during the meeting that she is on the board of the national counterpart to that organization, and that in order to remain an officer there, the County would have to be a member of the statewide organization.

Blumert did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan expressed indifference to joining the organization, and said he would follow the wishes of the other two Commissioners. Calvey again expressed ambivalence about the decision.

District 1 Commissioner Carrie Blumert stated that she has been in communication with the new director of the Association, and that he is eager to work through the misgivings of the members of the Board.

Blumert moved to join, and hearing no second, Maughan seconded. Blumert and Maughan voted in favor, and Calvey abstained.

ARPA Contract

Final rulings for American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funds came down only in the past month. The regulations are dense and quite complicated.

Oklahoma County voted to contract a financial consultant to help guide plans for spending the federal relief money.

The company Accenture was chosen by the BoCC as the consultant for the task at hand. In the intervening weeks since making their choice, the Policy and Governance Committee has been fine-tuning the contract particulars.

An item to approve the contract was on the agenda for Monday’s meeting, but the chair of the Policy and Governance explained to the Board that the contract was not ready yet, and asked for the item to be stricken.

The contract will likely be on the agenda for the next BoCC meeting.

CARES Funds

Some of the County’s remaining CARES Act funds were allocated on Monday. The funds were awarded by the federal government to counties and cities across the United States to help recover from the economic blow of the devastating pandemic that has, so far, claimed the lives of 901,000 Americans.

The Budget Evaluation Team brought an item before the Board to reimburse the County’s Employee Benefits Fund. The total amount of the reimbursement is $328,182.30.

The Board approved the allocation unanimously.

ODOT Project

An upcoming Oklahoma Department of Transportation project for improvements on Luther Road will finally begin moving, after a vote from the BoCC regarding environmental services for the project.

The County is not typically on the hook for the environmental services of ODOT projects in the County, but the State requested the County be responsible for that cost.

When the State has a project on County roads and highways, the timeline and control of the project is in the hands of the State.

The project in question at Monday’s meeting needed the Environment Services piece paid for before the project could move ahead.

According to Maughan, the potential new infrastructure bill coming from the Federal Government could possibly reimburse or grant new money to the county for projects that are considered “shovel ready,” which made approving this cost a priority for the County.

The Commissioners voted unanimously to pay TEIM DESIGN an amount not to exceed $95,800 for services on the project.

The County Commissioners will meet next on February 22 at 9:00 a.m. That meeting will be on Tuesday, as the 21st is a federal holiday.


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Columnist covering local government in Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County from May 2019 through June 2023.