KINGSTON – The County of Ulster paid out at least $5.65 million in direct COVID-19 pandemic-related expenditures, County Comptroller March Gallagher reported Friday.
“Taxpayers deserve to know how much the pandemic has cost in total and for specific services such as the drive through testing facilities,” Gallagher said. “That level of specificity is not available because cost tracking was not ubiquitous or consistent as the county ramped up COVID operations.
Improvements in cost tracking and payroll identification would provide more transparency for this public health emergency as well as any future emergencies enabling the county to create efficiencies while maintaining services.”
The comptroller identified the following COVID-19 expenditures in 2020:
- $2.30 million was for supplies, contracts, and equipment
- $3.35 million was for personnel costs
- County employees reported 334,606 remote hours in 2020
The County entered $1.57 in 2020 contracts for pandemic-related services forgoing normal procurement procedures as allowed during the state of emergency. Vendors were paid $989,562 on those contracts, the
largest of which was for public health nursing.
The Emergency Management Department had the largest COVID expenditures primarily for supplies and materials. The Emergency Operations Center operated by the county provided 37,000 N95 masks; 447,000 surgical masks; 334,000 surgical gloves; 38,000 surgical gowns; 12,740 face shields; and 2,300 gallons of hand sanitizer.
