Nearly $9 million seems like a lot of money until you consider some major issues facing this community. Warren County received about $7.8 million while the city of Warren’s allocation was near $1 million when it comes to the American Rescue Plan Act funding.

However, there is no real direction yet for where to put this cash though there are the obvious suggestions. In the meantime, there are specific rules for how the funds can be spent. These include:

≤ Support public health response — fund COVID-19 mitigation efforts, medical expenses, behavioral health-care and certain public health and safety staff.

≤ Address negative economic impacts — respond to economic harms to workers, families, small businesses, and nonprofits, or impacted industries and re-hiring of public sector workers.

≤ Replace public sector revenue loss — use funds to provide government services to extend of the reduction in revenue experienced due to the pandemic.

≤ Premium pay for essential workers — offer additional support to those who have and will bear the greatest health risks because of their service in critical infrastructure. Funds can be used retroactively back to Jan. 27, 2020.

≤ Water, sewer and broadband infrastructure — make necessary investments to improve access to clean drinking water, invest in wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and provide unserved or underserved locations with new or expanded broadband access.

That last option appears to be the most popular here as internet and infrastructure dominate the discussion. “(We) know we want to spend the bulk of the money on broadband deployment in the county,” said Commissioner Ben Kaefferlin.

Getting even a small portion of the county tied to the Internet will be progress — especially when an era of working from home is becoming more popular. County — and business leaders — need to be involved in looking at just how important that is when assessing the future of this region.