The Town of Pembroke received a $61,000 check from the Plymouth County Commissioners.
The reimbursement is from the federal CARES Act. The Commissioners are in charge of a $90 million fund to help towns with unexpected expenses from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Select Board Vice-Chair Jessica Bradley Rushing says this was a team effort with numerous meetings to figure out their priorities for funding.
“We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to enable not just the schools, but all the town residents to benefit from these funds,” said Bradley Rushing. “Things like ensuring the continuation of work can happen if the Town Hall were to be back on a remote status, enabling town employees to access their work from home.”
For the first round, the town was reimbursed mostly for PPE, fogging machines, and other cleaning supplies.
The Town will be moving forward towards technology upgrades for employees and for school students.
“One of the things that we found very, very quickly for meetings was that the computers and software that we were using didn’t support remote meetings,” Town Manager Bill Chenard said on the grants. “On the town side, this has been huge for us. On the schools, it’s just as huge. It gives them the ability to have the remote or hybrid learning models so they can be teaching students at their homes.”
The decision for the Commissioners to distribute the funds was initially met with skepticism, including from state Inspector General Glenn Cunha who said in a letter;
“Plymouth County, as a governmental entity, does not have the capacity or expertise to distribute the $90 million in federal funds that it received efficiently and effectively.”
Boston and Plymouth County chose to distribute the grants, while other counties returned the funds.
Commissioner Greg Hanley defended that decision, saying they know each of the 27 towns in Plymouth County individually. He says they’ve received the guidance from the state Secretary of Administration and Finance and the Inspector General on how to conduct post-audit oversight to track where the funds go.
“Everything we’ve undertaken gets checked five times before a check is written, so that when the federal government comes knocking to find out ‘where did the money go?’ We can tell them exactly and for what expense,” said Hanley. “We think nationally, we’re one of the best organizations and we’ve had other jurisdictions nationally call us to copy our model.”
The Commissioners, along with state, and town officials gathered at Town Hall for the check presentation.
Select Board member Becky Coletta says as the town looks to the fall, they’re putting in a request for additional protective gear and technology upgrades.
“The most important thing to me is that Plymouth County is able to give us more immediate and more direct access to the CARES Act money,” said Coletta. “I’m really happy that they stepped up and have taken that role.”
