Here & Now

How Eau Claire Plans to Use American Stimulus Dollars

Frederica Freyberg:

Talk about a shot in the arm. Federal relief funding will send some $5.7 billion to Wisconsin as the state continues to weather the economic fallout of the pandemic and the costs of public health response. This includes $3.2 billion for state government, $1.1 billion for counties and more than $780,000 to cities. What will this windfall mean to communities these governments serve? We check in with Eau Claire County Administrator Kathryn Schauf to find out and thanks very much for being here.

Kathryn Schauf:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

First of all, what is your reaction to getting this money?

Kathryn Schauf:

It’s rather astounding. I think that all of our community partners are grateful and at the same time optimistic that we can put this money to use to not only fill gaps that we have from the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to stimulate our economic recovery in meaningful ways.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is your county expecting to see in the way of these relief funds?

Kathryn Schauf:

So the county will have a direct allocation of around $20.3 million and then, when added to other community partner, local government partners, it’s $37 million. So it’s a significant investment into our local community. And that doesn’t even count the monies that are going to be earmarked for specific projects such as public health, social services, broadband for our libraries and public schools. So there are a number of different funding resources that are going to add up to a significant investment in our local economy.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how do you expect to spend it?

Kathryn Schauf:

Well, I think that is the challenge. Right now we’re still awaiting guidance from the treasury, because we have general parameters that have been put forward, and from those general parameters we’ll need more detail to know what’s included and what is not. However, I think one of the things that we’ve been fortunate to have in Eau Claire is a strong community partnership with all of our sectors. And early on in our pandemic response, the local government partners got together with the local chamber, visit Eau Claire, our business partners and we said we need an economic recovery system that can help put information out into our community as well as helping vaccine information go out and how do we get through this pandemic together. And so we’ve put together an economic recovery or COVID recovery task force and that’s still in existence today. And that forum is one forum that we’re going to use when we have conversations about how do we recover. Because we have so many of the players who benefit from this investment at the table. Because we’ll want to have a lot of citizen input. When we’re looking at the dollars from a county perspective, we’re also looking at it from the standpoint of if we spend money today, we to want be able to invest it in a way that we can save tomorrow. We to want look at things that help our region. So regional coordination is extremely important, as is social equity. And so along with the economic recovery task force, we’ll work with our county board and other elected leaders, but also our local governments. And we have a strong local government collaborative initiative that’s actually tied to that economic recovery task force.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because what has been the economic fallout in Eau Claire County due to the pandemic?

Kathryn Schauf:

Well, it’s been somewhat spotty. There are areas that have really suffered. Of course, leisure, hospitality, our restaurants. And other areas that actually haven’t seen the same economic impact, such as manufacturing. In fact, we’ve seen some really positive increases in the area of manufacturing in the Chippewa Valley, even during the pandemic. And county government, for those types of service where we rely on whether it be fees, fines and forfeitures, or like our jail, our juvenile detention center, those type of facilities that are 24/7 and rely on the cost sharing that’s all based on the capacity and number of persons in there, those are some of the areas where we’re seeing losses from the counties perspective that we’ll be able to backfill with some of these funds as well as shoring up our public health efforts to respond to the pandemic.

Frederica Freyberg:

I understand that these are kind of one-time monies. So it’s not like you can launch new programs or projects without funding those going forward. What’s the best —

Kathryn Schauf:

Correct.

Frederica Freyberg:

— way briefly, to make the most of these funds?

Kathryn Schauf:

To make the most of the funds to look at the current infrastructure that’s there, where that needs shoring up and also to look at projects that benefit the community as a whole. And the one that comes immediately to mind is broadband. It’s on everyone’s radar right now as being absolutely essential and I would say it’s one of the learning pieces we take away from COVID, is that the need for access to broadband is essential.

Frederica Freyberg:

Absolutely. All right. Kathryn Schauf, thanks for joining us.

Kathryn Schauf:

Thank you.