Commissioners approve COVID-19 relief for health department

ROCKINGHAM — The Richmond County Board of Commissioners approved relief funding for the Health Department which will go towards their ongoing fight against COVID-19. The board also heard an update on Richmond Community College’s plans for the fall.

Cheryl Speight, director of Patient Services for the Richmond County Health Department, requested a budget amendment for the 2020-21 fiscal year to accommodate $27,269 in funding from the COVID-19 CARES Act. Speight explained that this money would go towards salaries for their 13 nurses and would fund the Health Department sending one nurse to the drive-thru COVID-19 testing site at FirstHealth Monday through Friday.

Of that total, $22,000 would go directly towards salaries, and the rest would be split up among FICA, group insurance, retirement and 401k, according to support documents for the meeting. The request was approved with a motion from Vice Chair John Garner and Commissioner Don Bryant.

Speight requested another budget amendment to accommodate $15,676 from the COVID-19 Crisis Response Program State Fund, as well as to make up for $35,500 that was taken out of the original 2020-21 budget. The $15,676 will go towards the salaries of two part-time contact tracers that the state has requested the Health Department hire.

“This is due to all of the positive (COVID-19 cases) we have,” Speight said. Richmond County has seen 501 total cases as of Wednesday, and 104 of those are active. “We have to get a list of (each person’s) contacts and all those contacts have to be counted — that’s very time consuming.”

Health Director Tommy Jarrell told the Daily Journal last month that the Health Department’s staff had reached a point where “could not keep up with” the contact tracing needed to properly address the amount of new cases of the virus.

The total amount of $51,176 resulting from these state funds and the omitted amount that will now be added to the budget will be broken down over a number of different expenditures. There will $10,676 going directly to salaries, $34,500 towards office supplies, and the rest split up relatively evenly between, again, FICA, group insurance, retirement and 401k, according to support documents for the meeting.

This budget amendment was approved with a motion by Commissioners Jimmy Capps and Ben Moss.

The board also approved a $197,000 grant to support staff that lead the REACH program in Richmond County, which stops in to physical education classes throughout the county once per week to teach students about healthy lifestyle choices. Speight explained that they weren’t sure they would be awarded this grant, and assured the board that no county funds would be needed to match it.

Dr. Dale McInnis, president of RCC, said that the college learned a great deal this spring and summer which will be applied this fall to make it “safe, effective, productive, and a good experience for our employees, and especially for our students.”

Students restarted face-to-face classes on June 15 with extensive provisions in place to maintain social distancing and a clean environment.

McInnis touted the new opening of the remodeled Hugh A. Lee Building, which now is now much more prominently featured on the campus and consolidates student services, career services and financial aid in one place, whereas before students would have to bounce from building to building to take advantage of those services.

“It’s been very very effective and the staff and faculty are very excited about (the Lee building),” McInnis said.

The college has had its security measures audited since the severe cyber attack it suffered last year which temporarily took out its online services. The audit will be presented at the Board of Trustees meeting next week.