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The Board of Osage County Commissioners held a special meeting on Wednesday morning to discuss funding they would be receiving from the American Rescue Plan and how they intended to use that money. This included a proposed breakdown of where the money would go, discussion of possible salary increases for county employees and adjustments to health insurance plans for the coming year.

County Clerk Robin Slack and Treasurer Sally Hulse expects the county to receive an estimated total of just over nine million dollars. Slack says the county should be getting half of that money within the next month and it is important to begin formulating a plan on how to distribute those funds. Slack put a presentation together and goes through what she came up with.

In the initial plan that Slack drew up, county offices such as the assessor’s office would have $75,000 to make any needed repairs that they felt like they needed to make. The same goes for the others who are in need of financial help to make updates. If this money is available, the commissioners talked about putting it in the building fund.

County Assessor Ed Quinton Jr. was concerned that if they do that, the money would go away for each department, but District Three Commissioner Darren McKinney assured him it would be available.    

With that being said, McKinney said these are all estimated figures and it is important to keep that in mind.

McKinney closed by saying the rough draft of a plan has been laid out and tweaks can be made moving forward as they see fit now that they have begun an open dialogue.

Discussion from there led to the possibility of county employees getting pay raises.