County officials are back to the drawing board on how to spend more than $90,000 in federal grant dollars after a municipality withdrew a project over concerns about mandating water hookups.

It’s federal Community Development Block Grant funding and the county now has about a week to figure out what to do with the money.

The county’s Grants Administrator, Lorri Dunlap, provided the update to the commissioners during a public hearing held on Wednesday in advance of the commissioner’s meeting.

Two projects were to be funded from the most recent annual allocation — one in Clarendon to improve the stormwater system on Center Street and a water line improvement in Sheffield on High Street.

In Clarendon, Dunlap said the current system is undersized and “people’s yards are flooding on both sides of the street.” That project will move ahead.

In Sheffield, Dunlap said that “some of the residents were complaining about the lack of upkeep and maintenance on that line” and that part of her survey to determine program eligibility included a survey of whether or not the residents wanted the project. She said that poll was split 50-50.

Dunlap told the commissioners that the township would have had to implement an ordinance that required the residents to connect in order to be eligible to use the funding.

“Yesterday they informed me, they decided to withdraw their project (and) don’t want to make everybody have to connect,” Dunlap said.

As a result, there’s approximately $93,0000 to be reallocated and Dunlap said it is “getting late in the game. (We are) going to have to hopefully find something (we) can reallocate those funds to in the next week or so.”

COMMISSIONERS RECOGNIZE PROFESSIONALS

The commissioners signed off on a proclamation to recognize direct service professionals in Warren County. “(We) truly appreciate the recognition,” Carl Seeker with Lakeshore Community Services Inc said, highlighting that with staffing shortages many are working 50 to 60 hours a week at this time.

Eggleston said an ice cream truck is going to be brought in as a token of appreciation at both a group home in Youngsville and a location in Warren on Monday. He said “all direct support professionals are welcome to come to the truck.”