Carbon County has officially extended its declaration of disaster emergency due to the pandemic until Dec. 31.

On Thursday, the board approved the extension of the declaration because the county will incur additional expenses for COVID-19 related responses through at least the end of the year.

Last week, Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein “strongly encouraged” municipalities to also look at extending their declarations as well.

In other matters, the commissioners ratified $19.7 million in investments in the Pennsylvania Local Government Investment Trust, effective July 8.

Last month, the commissioners began the process to join the trust as a way to salvage some of the interest rate they lost over the last year.

The county budgeted for an interest rate of its funds at Mauch Chunk Trust Company at 1.5 percent, but due to the pandemic, the interest rate has dropped to 0.25 percent.

The 19.7 million will now receive an interest rate of 0.46 percent.

Block grant

The COVID Block Grant being administered by Carbon County will open for applications to eligible groups next week as long as all goes as planned.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners ratified the appointment of several representatives for each of the committees who will help review applications for a portion of the $5.79 million Carbon County has received for COVID funds.

Committees include groups in the categories of municipality, small business, tourism and 501(c)3 and 501(c)19.

The board said that they tried to make each committee as diverse as possible, both in the types of leaders involved, as well as geographically so that all areas of the county are represented.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein also said he believes the county is still on schedule to open the grant application period on July 15 with a deadline for submissions on July 31. The application, once available, will be posted on the county website at www.carboncounty.com.

After the grant application period closes, the county block grant administration group, made up of Jeff Weiss of Zelenkofske Axelrod LLC, the financial consultant for the county; as well as the county’s designated COVID Block Grant coordinator, will review the applications and pass them on to the committees for review.

Recommendations from the administration group and committees will be made to commissioners by the end of August, with the final approvals and fund distributions to applicants anticipated for mid-September as long as no changes from the state or federal government are given to counties in the meantime.

Previously, the board stressed that groups looking to apply for some of this funding should be preparing receipts and expense reports now so that they have all documentation in place for the application.