Ducks swim past the F-105 Thunderchief on display at Aviation heritage Park on Monday, April 7. (JACK DOBBS / Daily News)

It has been about three and half months since Warren County was hit with over 10 inches of rain that led to floods across the community. As aid from the federal government moved in to support individual residents who had damage to their property, no aid has been made available for local government and some officials are losing hope that any will come in at all.

“I know we checked all the boxes with the meeting the thresholds” for aid, Bowling Green City Manager Jeff Meisel told the Daily News. “But it looks to me like we would have probably heard something by now.”

Kentucky was inundated with flooding the first week of April, which raised water levels in rivers, flooded roads and uprooted lives across the state. Locally, over 10 inches of rain fell. Over half of Kentucky’s 120 counties declared local states of emergency, including Warren County and the City of Bowling Green.

Municipalities can only access federal aid from FEMA after a formal disaster declaration is approved by the president. On May 16, FEMA arrived in Warren County providing aid to residents whose homes and businesses were affected. The deadline to apply for individual assistance is this Friday, July 25.

However, a presidential declaration for governmental assistance has thus far not been made. If made available, the money would cover expenses related to local governments’ response to the event, such as equipment rental and costs for repairs to government property.

The biggest expense, Meisel said, is overtime.

“Occasionally we have to rent equipment, big equipment of some kind, but labor is the biggest (expense),” he said. “Those guys, they’re out all night, (we) got to pay them.”

The city has a fund set aside to meet needs like this, Meisel said, a fund that currently totals around $29 million and is based on 25% of the city’s revenue budget. The number grows each year, but remains at the 25% level.

“We just try to be conservative and always have a cushion,” he said.

Meisel said there are no plans to raise taxes or cut city services to cover the expenses.

“We’re not going to go raise taxes,” he said. “We’re not going to go out and cut a bunch of stuff, because we had a natural disaster. We plan for it.”

City commissioners in May approved a $900,000 change order to its sinkhole mitigation contract with Scott & Ritter. So far, the city has spent over $750,000 combined on repairs and overtime related to the disaster.

Ronnie Pearson, head of Warren County Emergency Management, said local government is continuing to communicate with federal officials such as Rep. Brett Guthrie and Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, but neither a “yes” or “no” has been given.

“I don’t know that any community in the state of Kentucky has been approved for public assistance on this disaster at all,” Pearson said.

While a FEMA public assistance office is open currently on Nashville Road, Pearson said this is related to the flooding in February, not April.

Despite regular conversations with FEMA, Pearson said answers are still nowhere to be found.

“I’ve been in discussion with FEMA on this weekly, (no one can) give me an answer — is it going to be approved, is it not going to be approved — at all,” he said. “ … We’re kind of in limbo.”

Pearson said when public assistance is made available after a disaster, any projects that require an engineering study have to be approved by FEMA. If they’re not, that project is disqualified from funding.

“If you go in there and do a project and FEMA’s review engineers don’t like the way our engineer engineered it, (they’ll say) no, we’re not going to cover that project because it wasn’t engineered the way we think it should be,” Pearson said. “ … That’s sometimes the reason it takes two or three years to close out a disaster.”

Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman told the Daily News that while the county has put money back to cover expenses, aid from FEMA is needed to offset costs. He said the county is “flying blind” at the moment and has never been in a situation where it’s dealing with a situation like this by itself.

Like the city, though, Gorman said the county is not anticipating any tax hikes or cuts to services, saying that’s a conversation for “way down the road.”