SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting Wednesday to decide how the remaining $8.8 million of CARES Act funding will be spent.
After hours of deliberation and public comments, the board decided to go in their own direction, a bit away from the county staff’s original recommendation to spend $1 million on food assistance programs and the rest on coronavirus testing.
Here’s a look at what the board decided:
- $1 million will, indeed, stay with a food program to help with food insecurity across Sacramento County
- $5.8 million, the largest chunk, will go towards testing
- $1 million will now go towards a childcare assistance program.
- $1 million will now be used for a proposal from the Latino Economic Council.
Rachel Rios, the Executive Director of La Familia Counseling Center and a member of the Latino Economic Council said that money will go into three different buckets which include continued community outreach, small business support and direct services for the Latino community.
“We know that in Sacramento as in California, Latinos have had a disproportionate impact in terms of covid cases but also in terms of businesses but also in terms of those front line workers so this is much gratitude for our board of supervisors recognition,” Rios said.
Sacramento County Board Chairman Phil Serna Phil Serna told ABC10 that county health officials were ok with the plan to divert some of the money originally earmarked for testing and they say, they can make it work.
“So we all wanted to feel comfortable that we’re not going to move money around to the detriment of testing and so that’s why I feel like today was really a good day in terms of a balanced approach moving forward,” Serna said.
This decision was made knowing that more federal help is on the way with the newly approved stimulus package. They are hoping to know more about how much money Sacramento County will be getting this time around by their next board meeting on Jan. 12.
