The Madison County Commission approved $1.75 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding for three Huntsville organizations at its meeting on Wednesday.

Wellstone Inc. will receive $1 million. Fantasy Children’s Playhouse Theater will receive $500,000 and the Huntsville Museum of Art will receive $250,000, County Attorney Jeff Rich said.

“All three are items that we discussed back in 2021,” District 6 County Commissioner Violet Edwards said. “These are not new appropriations. We said that we were going to do it several years ago, and we are following through on things that we had discussed two years ago.”

Rich said Wellstone’s funding will be used to provide behavioral health services for Madison County and north Alabama residents.

“If you look at the ARPA 2 guidance, a lot of that guidance is for behavioral health,” added Wellstone CEO Jeremy Blair. “Primarily it’s lost income during the (COVID-19) pandemic. For us, we will use it to increase the availability of our services, especially outpatient.”

Blair said the facility’s numbers continue to increase month over month in terms of the number of patients being seen.