State and federal funding have been put to good use over the past several months as the city of Emporia has been hard at work implementing mitigation strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The efforts began back in June after the city received $167,000 in funding through the state’s Community Development Block Grant program. A portion of those funds was earmarked for economic development with the remainder set to assist food and meal programs.
Following this, the city then received SPARK funding from the state, of which the county was made the administrator of, and allowed the city to address a number of safety-related projects for both citizens and employees. City Manager Mark McAnarney, a recent guest of KVOE’s Talk of Emporia, says they were grateful to receive these funds, however, the gift did not come without some hurdles.
All of the funds had to be spent by the end of the year, meaning some projects had to be placed on the back burner due to time restrictions.
Among the projects that did manage to go forward was the installation of new combination metal detectors, temperature scanners and face imaging machines at White Auditorium and the Emporia Public Library a few months back. Additionally, the city was able to implement air filtration systems and electrostatic disinfectant sprayers among other purchases.
McAnarney says while there has been a lot of hard work at the administrative level in response to the pandemic, he took time to also recognize the hard work of city employees who never missed a step in keeping day-to-day operations going since the onset of the pandemic.
All of this came on top of the city-wide mask ordinance that has been in place since early August. The city plans to continue reviewing the ordinance throughout the continuation of the pandemic with the ordinance now in place through Jan. 26.
