County officials are zeroing in on what the range of permissible uses of federal American Rescue Plan dollars will be.

The county is set to receive a total of $7.8 million in two tranches.

Lisa Hagberg, the county’s director of finance and administration, told the county commissioners that recent guidance will let the county claim up to $10 million in lost revenue from providing government services.

According to the National Association of Counties, counties will be able to claim the loss without verification through a U.S. Treasury formula.

Hagberg said the county will have to make a determination whether to claim that loss by the end of April when the first round of reporting is due.

“It’s a check box,” she said. “We would be crazy not to check the box.”

Hagberg said she would still recommend using various buckets to allocate the funding internally but “we do not have to prove that we spent in those particular buckets.”

There are a litany of expenses the loss revenue claim can’t be used for, such as paying off debt, unfunded pension obligations and legal settlements.

But the use, ultimately, will be pretty broad.

“We can basically spend on anything that is government related,” she said.

In other business, Commissioner Jeff Eggleston pitched the idea of the county naming an official county engineer and the board agreed to put out a request for proposals on that.

Eggleston said he had been speaking with County Planner Dan Glotz, who sees benefit in his office with federal Community Development Block Grant projects as well as possible extensions of the Bike-Hike Trail.

Eggleston said the county until the last couple years had a contract with a firm but “that contract went by the wayside. … We were doing this thing, hiring people on the spot. You have to advertise every time you do that. With this, we would just be able to work with somebody.”

He noted that the bidding times can slow down projects.

Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt said the county code permits the commissioners to appoint a county engineer.

The commissioners were set to meet on Wednesday but indicated on Monday that there were no new items for the Wednesday agenda and the meeting would be canceled.