Board of Comanche County commissioners finalize 4 ARPA grants

LAWTON – Comanche County finalized American Rescue Plan Act grants for four towns on Monday.

The Board of Comanche County Commissioners unanimously approved notices of award and subrecipient award agreements for Sterling, Geronimo, Cache and Fletcher. Those towns will each receive a grant from the county’s share of ARPA funds.

“We’re glad to be able to give this money to the towns,” said Commission Chairman Alvin Cargill.

The grant amounts for each town are as follows:

• Sterling will receive $75,086 to cover the cost of replacing a lagoon pump, which stopped working during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The grants will help communities upgrade their water and wastewater systems, said attorney David Floyd, who is working with county officials on ARPA-related issues.

“If you recall, back in June, we adopted a preliminary budget,” he said. “We awarded a sum of money to the municipalities in Comanche County to build their water and sewer projects, and this is one of those.”

Sterling Mayor Dale Winkler said he appreciated the grant.

“This is going to go a long way to helping us out,” he said.

Geronimo will get a $209,875 grant to replace outdated water meters with electronic meters throughout the city.

Fletcher will get a $222,000 grant to install a new irrigation system to dispose of water from the sewer lagoons located off U.S. Highway 277.

The $222,000 grant will supplement a $3,000 ARPA grant from the county, which will supply matching funds for a $45,000 Rural Economic Action Plan grant. The local and federal grants will help pay for installing a new sprinkler system for the town’s sewer lagoons.

The commission finalized the $3,000 grant a couple of weeks ago, Floyd said.
“They had a separate request that was going to go for some matching funds, so we did that one separately,” he said.

Cache will get a $487,000 grant to replace old water meters with electronic meters.

The county received about $23 million in financial assistance under ARPA, a federal relief program to help local units of government recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. County officials are distributing a portion of those funds to communities for eligible projects.