ROCHESTER – In the midst of a lot of bad news over the last few years, Plymouth County Commissioner Jared Valanzola said that he likes to bring good news to towns throughout the county.

Valanzola delivers checks from the The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, otherwise known as CARES.

The CARES Act is a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed in March 2020 in response to some of the economic struggles that came with the pandemic.

On Thursday, May 19, Valanzola visited Rochester’s Town Hall to bring the town its last check, worth $100,583 as part of $926,000 that Rochester has received in total over the past few years.

“This was a rare instance where multiple layers of government and multiple political parties came together,” Valanzola said.

Town Administrator Glenn Cannon explained that this latest funding would be used to reimburse phone system upgrades so that town employees could work from home, PPE storage space and EMT devices, like ones for oxygen monitoring.

“I heard that the phone systems were a big issue at the start of the pandemic,” Cannon said. “The phones were a little antiquated.”

He mentioned that it was “very annoying” for employees who couldn’t access their voicemail from home, and it kept them from being able to do their jobs remotely.

In total, Plymouth County received about $90 million dollars from the CARES Act, which was divided among towns based on their populations.

Assistant Town Administrator Suzanne Szyndlar said Rochester has allocated all of its CARES money.

“The way Plymouth distributed it was a national model for many counties around us,” said Valanzola, who mentioned that they encouraged and helped communities find ways to use all of the money.