The Warren County Commissioners have contributed $500,000 to the downtown riverfront development project.

The allocation was approved during a meeting last week.

The city’s original request for funding had been for American Rescue Plan (ARPA) dollars. The county received over $7 million while the city received just less than $1 million.

City Manager Nancy Freenock pointed out that the city makes up about 25 percent of the county’s population in asking for an allocation larger than $500,000.

Angie Dart, Warren General Hospital facilities manager, told the commissioners that they support the project and reminded the commissioners that the helipad boat launch is under a covenant that prohibits its closure as a boat ramp until another launch is open.

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said it is not prudent to use the Rescue Plan funds for this allocation as the county is still waiting for estimates regarding broadband expansion, which is where the county would like to use the funding.

“My recommendation was to pull the funding from the seldom-tapped Erie Bank account that we have,” he said, which was funding that was the “result of the North Warren land deal.” That deal paved the way for what we now know as the Warren Commons.

Kafferlin stressed that the project is beneficial to the entire county and “integral to the success of the downtown and the community. I am very supportive of it.”

Commissioner Tricia Durbin, spearheading the broadband efforts, said the riverfront project is a “key marketing project for tourism” and that she is “very supportive of that.”

She defended the decision not to use Rescue Plan funds for the project.

“The goal in using ARPA is is to continue to think through the infrastructure this county needs to enable people to relocate here, business to come here,” she said.

“I think it’s a great project,” Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said, but stressed this view that there are “a lot of different buckets we can try to tape into for additional funding on this.”

He called the city and county’s combined funding a “very solid match” to those ends.