By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
After months of discussion of what could or couldn't be done with federal coronavirus relief money, Buchanan County is ready to move forward with several projects.
Buchanan County Presiding Commissioner Lee Sawyer says some of the money will help Pivotal Point Transitional Housing in St. Joseph with its efforts to help youth homelessness.
"Pivotal Points in the process of taking the money that we've earmarked there and money that they're raising outside to put together a facility over there on Gene Field that would be an organized, supervised arrangement where these kids can have a more structured home life," Sawyer tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr.
Pivotal Point has been raising money since September of last year for the two-phase project, with the goal of raising $4 million overall.
Buchanan County was awarded around $17 million overall in American Rescue Plan funds.
Sawyer says projects officials were looking to fund were ones that would have a long-lasting effect on the county.
"We want projects that can have long, sustainable, difference making programs is what we're really working on," Sawyer explains.
Sawyer says he was also looking for projects on which the county could partner with others.
"Some of the other things we're looking at is that we're a portion of the investment," he says. "There's outside, there's private money, in some situations there's going to be state money, there's other organizations like maybe the city of St. Joseph."
Sawyer says what he likes about all the projects the county is providing money to is ones that the county isn't investing by themselves on most of them.
Buchanan County officials also have federal money waiting for the Mosaic Children’s Discovery Center and are just waiting now on city officials.
Sawyer says the St. Joseph City Council is getting ready to vote on the project.
"We've earmarked our money," Sawyer says. "The only real change was that the council, it looks like they're going to take some of the money they were going to put directly towards the Childrens Discovery Center and put that money towards infrastructure for parking and sidewalks and some of those kinds of things with the building in that part of downtown."
Sawyer says the state-of-the-art museum will provide different opportunities for children to learn and innovate.
He also says it should help to bring more visitors to St. Joseph as well as helping shore up the population loss in the area.