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Dates to remember:
¯ County home meeting, 11 a.m. Tuesday, county home.
¯ Regular county commission meeting, 9 a.m. Thursday, 1115 Gilman Ave.
¯ Finance committee meeting, 10 a.m. April 20, county courthouse.
Source: Washington County Commission Clerk.
A funding request for the Devola sewer project will soon be sent to U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, by the Washington County Commission.
"The Republican conference in the House of Representatives is allowing each Republican member to identify up to 10 projects for infrastructure funding," explained Commission President Kevin Ritter at Thursday's board meeting. "What this board is doing is making the application to Rep. Johnson's office for the Devola sewer project to be included as one of those projects."
He said they are asking Johnson to take a look at the application and report it back to the Republican conference. The funding request is for $7 million.
"Hopefully with support from the community, we'll get some funding that will help offset what is otherwise a very expensive project locally," Ritter said.
Commissioner Charlie Schilling has talked at recent meetings about trying to find funding for the estimated $15 million project.
"I think it's the one big office that we haven't approached…but the timing is right now," he said. "We need to make sure we're going after as much funding as we can, not only for the citizens of Devola, but for all the residents of Washington County that this affects."
Commissioner Jamie Booth said this was more evidence of the effort the commission, along with County Engineer Roger Wright, puts into "turning over every rock to find any and every dollar that we can to help everybody in Washington County because, essentially this affects everybody, especially all the sewer customers in the county."
In other commission business, a letter from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services advised the commission the county's JFS office would receive nearly $170,000 as its mandated share of reimbursable TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and income maintenance expenditures for fiscal year 2022.
Flite Freimann, JFS director for Washington County, said the money will not be used for salaries or operations. He said these funds are not tied to any federal program, which makes them the most valuable dollars JFS has.
"When a federal program comes available that requires a 25 percent match or a 50 percent match, we can then use these dollars," he said. "We keep them in a separate account."
He said they also use the money for programming. Sometimes someone comes in with a need but doesn't qualify for other programs.
"The poor individual is 59-years old, they don't qualify, they don't have a minor child in the home, they don't qualify for TANF, they don't qualify for Title XX, they don't qualify for anything and we still want to help them," he said. "We can tap into these dollars. I can assure you that every one of these $169,000 is going to help a member of Washington County and not go to operational expenses."
Ritter said 98 cents of every dollar JFS spends does not come from the county general fund.
"That is repeatedly misunderstood by the public in Washington County," he said.
Michele Newbanks can be reached at mnewbanks@mariettatimes.com.