TYLERTOWN — Looser regulations on federal dollars awarded to help local governments address losses and special needs related to COVID-19 are opening myriad possible uses for those funds.
In response, Walthall County supervisors on Wednesday passed a resolution acknowledging the change in terms going forward as well as applying the new standards retroactively to the county’s purchase of the former Sunflower grocery store building in Tylertown for more than $400,000.
“When you bought the Sunflower building, you had to jump through a lot of hoops to justify it, and you did,” board attorney Conrad Mord said.
With the new guidelines in place, Mord said the Butler Snow law firm of Ridgeland — hired as special advisers on spending the American Rescue Plan Act funds — drew up a resolution to formalize the terms for the county.
Mord said the resolution should be added to the minutes of the September meeting in which the purchase was approved.
The change in regulations could also save two businesses in Tylertown.
Dwayne Thomas, who has owned Smokey’s Discount Tobacco in the north end of the Sunflower building since 1992, asked the board if he would be allowed to renew his lease in the building, which he said runs out this October.
He said he had ordered beer coolers to install after the town and county approved beer and liquor sales in a 2019 referenudum, but he canceled the order due to the uncertainty about whether he would be able to stay in the building longterm.
“I just want to know what’s going to happen,” Thomas said. “If I can’t extend the lease, I may as well go ahead and shut it down.”
Mord said he was unsure about the legality of extending the lease, but that the lifting of the other restictions on use of the fedreal money that bought the building may have lifted any bars to allowing retail use of space on the property.
Mord said he would look into that, and asked Thomas to come back to the board meeting on March 7.
The owners of a “snow-cone” stand that set up on the property during summers were previously told they would not be able to operate on the property due to the restrictions on use of the property that applied because of the federal money.
Mord said Monday that the board would discuss whether the snowball stand can return at next week’s meeting.
With the county proceeding with plans to convert the remaining $2.7 million of those federal funds to local funds by reimbursing themselves for general government expenditures, the board is already planning needed purchases that could be difficult without the extra cash coming in.
Asistant District Attorney Tim Jones, who chairs the county’s E-911 commission, and county fire coordinator Jimmy Boyd renewed a request for radios accessible to the state network for the county’s fire departments.
They estimated $200,000 to $250,000 would allow “basic conversion” to the network radios, and asked for radios made by Motorola, which other Walthall County agencies and most agencies in surrounding counties use.
While other companies make compatible radios which are cheaper, Jones and Boyd said they don’t have the functionality on the network that the Motorola radios do.
On the existing, non-network radios, Walthall fire departments cannot communicate easily with departments outside the county or with law enforcement agencies, Boyd said.
He added that in order to keep the older radios in service, the county would need to replace a repeater device and a generator soon.
“If we’re the only county without these at the fire departments, I think we need it,” said Supervisor Ken Craft, who presided over the meeting in board President Larry Montgomery’s absence. “If we’re not the only ones without these radios, if it’s going to help the county, we need it.”
“I can’t think of anything better to spend this money on,” Mord said.
