YOUNGSTOWN — With city council approving legislation to accept $2.92 million in federal COVID-19 relief money, the administration will now focus on where those dollars will go.

Kyle Miasek, interim finance director, said he will be working with department heads over the next three weeks or so to come up with a plan.

“It will be a framework of how we’re going to apply the funding,” Miasek said.

The $2,922,024 from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act formally was accepted Wednesday by city council and put into a newly created fund “for payroll expenses, public health, human services and similar employees whose services were substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency,” according to the ordinance.

Miasek estimates about 15 to 20 percent of salaries of police, fire, 911, sanitation, finance and law departments went toward virus-related expenses and almost all of the health district’s expenses were connected to COVID-19.

The money will help bail out the general fund, which was hit hard by the pandemic.

The city’s 2.75 percent income tax, which funds much of the general fund operations, is $1,990,000, or 5.6 percent, under budget.

Through the end of July, the city has collected $33,580,000 when it had budgeted $35,570,000.

The city could end the year with about $2.5 million less in income tax than budgeted.

That’s why the CARES Act funding is so important, Miasek said.

He said he also expects $2,358,224 more in federal COVID-19 funds to be provided to the city to pay for other costs related to the virus.

While Miasek hailed the federal funding as good news, he said he’s still concerned about legislation in the General Assembly to repeal a change in state law that allows municipalities that collect income tax to continue to do so from those who worked there but are now working from home because of the pandemic.

The city gets about 88 percent of its income tax revenue from those who live outside Youngstown, he said. That change would devastate cities such as Youngstown, Miasek said.

Also Wednesday, council voted to allow the board of control to enter into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice for an $817,310.40 federal grant to pay about three-quarters of the costs of the salaries and benefits of eight police officers over three years.

The city must pay $250,515.04 toward those expenses.

But council declined to approve a separate ordinance to appropriate the grant. Instead, it was moved to council’s safety committee because the city won’t be ready to have the new officers start until next spring.

If the city’s finances take a turn for the worse and it can’t afford the local match, it can reject the federal grant.

Police Chief Robin Lees said the department is already down seven officers from its staffing level of 150 and will lose at least two others by the end of this year to retirement, so the city has little option but to hire to replenish the force. Having most of that cost paid by a federal grant for three years is the best option for the city, Lees said.