MAYFIELD, Ky. — Tony Dowdy is up to his neck in paperwork and he could not be happier about it.

"It's awesome. It really is," he said Tuesday morning at his office at West Kentucky Allied Services.

That is because every piece of paper is a client, a person he can help.

"It makes me feel really good when I walk in in the morning and we've already got half a room full."

Usually by February, the seats are empty because the funds to help are gone. A few weeks back, he worried that would again be the case.

"We were operating day to day. We were telling clients if they needed assistance, they needed to get in," he remembered.

Then, in mid-January, the federal government allocated an additional $9.5 million to Kentucky's Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance Program.

But thanks to mild temperatures — Paducah's National Weather Service records December toJanuary as the second warmest on the books — and that boost from the feds, people like Jessica Hobbs are still able to get help.

"My husband works full time but it just not enough," she said, while waiting in the lobby of WKAS.

Her husband's paycheck is $387 and the heating bill she held was $397. She was able to get help and Dowdy said it looks like many others will, too.

He expects to service an additional 500 families until the funds run out by the end of February.