The El Dorado Fire Department received more than $85,000 in coronavirus (COVID-19) relief funds to help cover pay for emergency medical workers and El Dorado City Council said they will need to adjust the city budget to process the payments.
During a Finance Committee meeting Sept. 10, Fire Chief Chad Mosby told council members that the funds came from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a federal stimulus package that was signed into law in April to prop up the economy during the public health crisis.
Mosby explained that the EFD claimed the relief funds on behalf of paramedics and emergency medical technicians who qualified, noting that the money flowed through the Arkansas Department of Human Services.
“As you know, during this COVID deal, the state received a lot of CARES Act money and part of that money has been carved out to pay EMTs and paramedics as a stipend,” the fire chief said.
He said the CARES Act funds not only cover cash payments to EMTs and paramedics, who have seen an uptick in ambulance calls over the past several months, but they also take care of payroll taxes, which entail Medicare deductions for the fire department.
Mosby asked the Finance Committee for an appropriation to spend the money and cut the checks.
City Treasurer Trena Dean said the funds are included in the EFD’s 2020 budget under the Direct Care Workers Reimbursement line item, adding that the second installment of the CARES Act payment arrived this month.
Council Member Vance Williamson, who chairs the Finance Committee, said the money needed to be allocated to a new line item in the EFD’s budget and paid from there.
“We’ll probably have to do some adjustments and do a refund because we’ve got more than what we asked for. I actually asked for $82,428.13,” Mosby said.
Added Williamson, “We’ll do a budget adjustment for the next council meeting. The others will be a budget adjustment and that will be a new appropriation.”
While reviewing the year-to-date budget for the city’s sanitation department, Williamson segued into a discussion about a proposed expenditure to replace an automated garbage truck and a new plan to replace garbage trucks in the future.
Robert Edmonds, director of public works, said the department has its eye on a used truck for approximately $65,000, explaining that the back end of the existing truck “fell off.”
“We still have both pieces. We have it. We just can’t use it. We found a used truck that still has several years of service left in it and I need approval for those funds,” Edmonds said.
The old truck is one of three sidearm-loaders the city purchased when it overhauled its curbside garbage collection process in 2015.
In addition to switching to the automated garbage trucks, which cost $774,000, the city also purchased and assigned more than 9,000 wheeled garbage cans to active households in El Dorado to be placed curbside for pickup.
At the time, Edmonds explained that the three automated trucks would initially be put on the road but the number would eventually be whittled down to two trucks that are used regularly.
The third truck was rotated in and out each week while one of two other trucks was in the City Shop for routine maintenance.
On Sept. 10, Council Member Paul Choate said he had spoken to mayors in a couple of cities that are smaller than El Dorado and learned that they lease their garbage trucks.
“They seemed to be quite pleased with that type of process,” Choate said. “My friend from McGehee (Mayor Jeff Owyoung) said that when one goes down, he picks up the phone and the next day, there’s another one sitting in front of the shop.”
“And we don’t have that,” Edmonds said, adding that he thought leasing trucks was a good idea and planned to roll into leasing contracts when replacing trucks over the next two years.
“So every 36 months, we’ll wind up with a new truck. It cost a little bit more money to do it that way but we save money because when those things start having failures …,” he continued.
“That’s something you can start looking into with the 2021 budget and kind of allocate it out for the next couple of years or however you want to see fit to do that,” Williamson said.
In the meantime, Williamson said funds are available in the sanitation/garbage budget to purchase the used truck and he advised Edmonds to re-appropriate the funds to the city’s capital improvement budget.