At Monday’s Knoxville City Council special meeting, the council approved a request for reimbursement from the Iowa COVID-19 Government Relief Fund. This fund provides cities the ability to alleviate pandemic-related expenses. City Manager Aaron Adams says that first responders will be a major beneficiary of these funds.

“Where this state money is really going to help us is on the personnel side. That’s where I think a lot of this will end up going, our firefighters, our police department, those critical workers during these types of events, these pandemics. Especially something like this, this isn’t a tornado where it happens and the event itself only takes 30 minutes to an hour, and you might clean up for days and weeks, and even into months. But this pandemic has been going on for over six months already. We don’t know when it will end. It’s just so helpful to have these sustaining funds over the long haul.”

The City of Knoxville will receive $170,000 from the Iowa COVID-19 Government Relief Fund.