The Hillsborough Board of Commissioners returned on Monday after its July break to a full schedule. On the agenda was discussion about the distribution of the town’s second round of CARES Act relief funds.

Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck about how these funds will be distributed and where community members are needing the most support.

In the second round of Coronavirus Relief Funds, Orange County received $2.8 million dollars of aid distributed through the state of North Carolina. The Town of Hillsborough will receive three percent of those funds – or about $86,400 dollars.

Orange County municipalities must report to the state and county how they intend to spend these allocated funds by September 1.

Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver said the town plans to allocate this money just as they did with the first round of relief.

“We will be dividing it in thirds as we did last time,” Weaver said. “A third going to housing assistance, a third going to utilities assistance and then a third going to food assistance. So really just trying to give some extra help to people in the community who are really being hurt by the economic impacts of COVID-19.”

Weaver said the housing allocation portion of funds will be going right back to the county – as Orange County rolled out a one-call processing center to respond to all housing needs in March.

As the nation continues to face the economic impact and financial strain of the pandemic, Weaver expects the need for housing assistance to grow exponentially.

“That’s definitely one of the things that keeps me and lots of other people awake at night is that it is expected that we have not hit the peak of housing assistance need yet – and that is likely to get quite a bit worse before it gets better,” Weaver said.

She said the allocation going towards food support and assistance is a little less clearly defined as the town needs to gather more information on how the first round of CARES funds was spent.

“We gave food assistance to multiple groups in the last round and so we’re really trying to check in with them to see what the need is, what their capacity is – because this money has to be spent down by the end of the calendar year,” Weaver said. “We want to be sure that people have the capacity to spend it.”

As far as utility bill assistance goes, the Town of Hillsborough expects to see more requests come in as the moratorium on utility cut-offs ends and penalties resume at the end of August.

Before Monday’s meeting, the town’s assistance program paired with CARES funding allowed for a maximum request of $200 dollars – but that cap was recently raised to $300 dollars to allow for greater assistance.

“People’s bills are high,” Weaver said. “When you’ve got rising unemployment and people have housing needs, people start doing triage with where they are divvying up their money. So I know that water bill is going to be one of the things people increasingly need help with.”

For more information on what was discussed at Monday’s board of commissioners meeting, find the full agenda and meeting notes here.

To listen to Aaron Keck’s full interview with Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver, click here.

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