Among the topics discussed at Tuesday morning’s Brownwood City Council meeting was the Brownwood/Brown County Health Department’s COVID budget as the end of the 2020 calendar year looms.

The Health Department has been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic since March of 2020. Funding for most expenses has been supplied through grants. The Corona Relief Funds (CRF) will end Dec. 30, 2020 and the Corona Response Funds from Department of State Health Services (DSHS) will end on March 15, 2021. In order to continue the current response as recommended by DSHS and CDC local government funding would be required.

Lisa Dick, Administrator with the Brownwood/Brown County Health Department, stated when both grants eventually run their course, “it would require about $10,000 a month to continue the response at the level we are right now.”

Brownwood Mayor Stephen Haynes intends to consult with Brown County Judge Paul Lilly and mayors with other towns within the county to determine how to proceed going forward.

“The bottom line is how do we scale back hours and get it under control going forward if we don’t get additional COVID monies,” Haynes said. “We’re looking at an outflow of $37,500 for the rest of the budget year. Our hope is all the other municipalities or taxing entities agree to share the cost of the health department with us according to population.”

Haynes stated he was apprehensive about an extension into June 2021.

“Obviously our hope and prayer is the vaccination becomes available in January and by March we’re not seeing a need,” Haynes said. “Maybe we do something short term for January-February, then maybe month to month after that.”

The Health Department has taken steps since Thanksgiving week to reduce the man-hour workload significantly, according to Dick.

Among the changes are close contacts are still quarantined but don’t get email or mail isolation orders; positives get an email or mail isolation order, but not personal service; and there are only follow ups with positives, not contacts.

With positive cases “remaining pretty constant around 60 a day,” Dick said staffing could remain as is for a while longer. “As things change, the staffing situation could look different. We’re trying to hold it where we’re at,” Dick added.

Action on the Health Department’s COVID-19 budget will be taken during a future city council meeting.

Dick gave a glowing review of the current Health Department staff, which at some point in the future will decrease.

“The staff we have been working with for the COVID response are very positive people, hard workers, but the opportunity to regroup if they don’t see some longevity with employment is a concern,” Dick said. “They are not just working because they want to, they’re working to support their families. If I were in their shoes I would start looking for something else if I saw an end to the employment that I have. We don’t want to lose those staff, I know we can’t commit to a forever type thing, but as long as they can see that we’re working at it and we have a little bit of a long-term plan I would at least appreciate them going through that time frame. We’ve really gained some amazing staff and when this is over I will give a recommendation for any of them to work anywhere in town.”

Also Tuesday, the Brownwood City Council unanimously approved Dr. Jason Hubbard to replace Dr. James Hays as Brownwood /Brown County Health Department Health Authority as of Jan. 1.

Prior to the conclusion of Monday’s meeting, Brownwood City Manager Emily Crawford addressed the impending arrival of COVID-19 vaccinations to Brown County and how the distribution will be handled.

“We are working on understanding our goal as a local health authority in regard to facts and distribution,” Crawford said. “Because these will be shipped in mass quantities it’s possible that we will have to distribute the vaccines to providers, but we’re still trying to get clarification on that. We could have a sizable role in that, and because of that (Brownwood Fire) Chief (Eric) Hicks has suggested we try to get some input from the county on how many people are planning on electing to take the vaccine and we will need to know how many vials that we would need for county purposes. We certainly don’t want too many because it just expires. We are working on a survey to go out, and mostly likely it will be digital, to the entire county. We’re just trying to find out how many people want it for the purpose of planning for vaccine distribution. Our intent isn’t to try and force someone to take a vaccine, we’re just trying to know how many vaccines we actually need in Brown County to distribute.”

Crawford further added, “If 10,000 or 15,000 or more plan to take the vaccine, we need to have a plan with our providers and our health department on how we’re going to give that in short period of time.”