Thursday, November 17, 2022

Columbia gets $28,140 in ARPA funds for $40,000 Emergency Response hub



Lancaster County Commissioners voted Wednesday to approve $28,140 in ARPA funds for a $40,000 project to create a mobile Emergency Operations Center hub for managing responses to emergencies in Columbia.

The borough cited “protests against the police, larger weather events and large special events” as past examples of such emergencies. Commissioner Josh Parsons said the small request also would benefit the county as a potential western emergency response hub.

The request was submitted by the Columbia Emergency Management Agency "with the intention of acquiring some of the equipment that may someday be used in a permanent facility to serve the needs of the borough," according to the agency's September 2022 report.

The grant money comes from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, a federal spending bill that pushed billions out to COVID-19 recovery efforts, emergency rental assistance, school districts and local governments.

The law allocated $106 million to Lancaster County government, and most individual municipalities also received money based largely on their population size.

[Sources: LNP, Lancaster County Commissioners meeting minutes, Columbia Emergency Management Agency Report]

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