This report is a summary of the costs related to responding to the pandemic that the Ulster County Comptroller’s Office was able to aggregate from existing reported financial and personnel data for 2020. The County continues to incur substantial costs in the current year 2021, many of which are offset by pandemic related revenue streams, such as the cost of operating vaccination clinics. We have reviewed the 2020 expenditures to assist in both improving the accounting for these costs and potentially identifying and obtaining revenues to offset these costs. Our review is limited to those costs that are directly identifiable as “related to COVID” and does not include many of the “repurposed resources” that the County allocated to addressing needs related to COVID. The Ulster County Executive and County Legislature undertook extraordinary efforts to protect the people of Ulster County, provide normal government services, and innovate entirely new systems and programs. These findings and recommendations are offered in the spirit of improving our ability to track and identify costs in the future with full recognition of the life-saving services provided during 2020 and the County’s rapid response to community needs.
