Follow the (ARPA) money: Exploring the impact of $46.6 million federal stimulus funds in Ashland County

ASHLAND — We’re following the money.

Roughly $5 trillion has funneled into the pockets of people, businesses, schools, governments and organizations across the country through federal stimulus money during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The money, meant to blunt the blow of the pandemic’s economic and social impact, came in two historic packages in 2020 and 2021 — the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

For the last couple months, Ashland Source has been investigating the use of ARPA funds, specifically in Ashland County’s disadvantaged communities.

Where did it go? How was it used? Has it all been spent? Exactly who benefitted from this money? In the coming weeks and months, we plan to find out and report back to you.

Public records and datasets reveal that a total of $46.6 million came to Ashland County in the form of ARPA stimulus money.

Recipients — local governments, school districts, individuals and nonprofits — of this federal grant money have spent the money in various ways.

The city of Ashland, for example, spent more than half of its $2.1 million allocation on its Claremont Avenue rehabilitation project. The city also gave a one-time $750 bonus to all employees in December 2023.

Clear Creek and Ruggles townships spent their allocations on chip-sealing various roads. Hanover Township spent its $89,000 as a down payment on a John Deere mower.

Ashland City Schools spent 40% of its $5.9 million on salaries and benefits, which includes the creation of a chief innovation officer. Funds also went to removing asbestos from Taft Intermediate School and renovating windows and doors at Ashland High School.

Ashland University received the largest sum: $16.9 million. It’s not yet clear how exactly this money was spent, but the U.S. Department of Education said the money is to be used to defray expenses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Those expenses include providing emergency financial aid grants, “lost revenue, reimbursement for expenses already incurred, technology costs associated with a transition to distance education, faculty and staff trainings and payroll.”

Why now and why ARPA?

Many ARPA recipients received their share of the money in halves — one payment in 2021, another in 2022.

We limited our investigation to tracking ARPA funds for two reasons.

First: the federal program's impending deadline.

All ARPA recipients have until Dec. 31, 2024 to obligate (or encumber) the money, and until Dec. 31, 2026 to spend it. Some communities in Ashland County have yet to earmark all the money, and the remaining five months represent the home stretch.

Public school districts had until Sept. 30 to spend the money. They have until Dec. 2 to report the expenditures to the state Department of Education.

If funds go unencumbered, ARPA regulations require local governments to return the money to the U.S. Department of Treasury.

When the clawback happens, the money goes into a pool. But then what?

"That's when it becomes a congressional question," said Alison Goebel, executive director of Greater Ohio Policy Center. "So whatever the regulations say today, they're still up for revision based on who's in power after January 2025."

As mentioned, there were two stimulus packages meant to stave off the impact of the coronavirus pandemic — CARES and ARPA. The second reason we chose to focus on ARPA is because it took aim at providing economic relief to people of modest means.

There were numerous funds within the 243-page ARPA bill. And each fund helped a different political subdivision, nonprofit or cause. Think of them as pots of money, each with a specific destination or purpose.

A significant pot of money, for example, was the $350 billion funneled into the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. That money went to state and local governments.

The Treasury intended that the SLFRF program be used to “support a truly equitable recovery and address health and economic disparities, exacerbated by the pandemic, in the most underserved communities.”

A percentage of the stimulus money also went to the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, and the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The regulations directing officials on how to spend the allocations differed slightly between each and every fund.

But the overall intent of the ARPA was to help disadvantaged or underserved communities.

"(ARPA) devotes about $1 trillion towards building a bridge to economic recovery for working families," reads a White House document about the program. "More than 85% of households will receive a check and checks in this bill are bigger than the checks in the CARES Act."

Goebel agreed.

“It wasn’t a blank check," she said. "It was truly to stabilize residents who were disproportionately impacted by COVID. People lost homes, jobs …

"To this day, the point of ARPA has not changed dramatically. It’s still about digging people out of the hole, and to prevent people from feeling those impacts in future threats.”

What is a 'disadvantaged' community?

Ashland Source applied for and received a grant from the Poynter Institute to investigate how entities in Ashland County spent ARPA money — and how the spending of this federal money affected disadvantaged areas within the county. 

There are several ways “disadvantaged” can be understood and defined.

For this reporting, we will follow the guidelines defined under the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) because it's what informed legislators’ regulatory decisions on how ARPA money should be spent.

The CEJST is a product of a January 2021 executive order under President Joe Biden.

The order established the Justice40 Initiative, a goal to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of investments in climate, clean energy and related areas to disadvantaged communities. 

To fulfill that goal, the Council on Environmental Quality developed the CEJST. The tool, an interactive map, uses several public datasets to determine “indicators of burden” in eight categories: climate change, energy, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and wastewater and workforce development.

Ashland County has 16,961 people that live in four census tracts defined as “disadvantaged,” according to the CEJST. The shaded parts of the map below represent disadvantaged areas.

There are several communities within Ashland County that meet five of the eight indicators of burden. Scroll past the map to learn more.

The areas in Ashland County that appear in tracts designated as disadvantaged include the townships of Ruggles, Troy, Orange (partial), Milton (partial), Clear Creek, Montgomery (partial), Green (partial) and Hanover.

The northern and central parts of the City of Ashland also appear, as well as the villages of Savannah, Bailey Lakes and Loudonville.

In the coming weeks and months, we will investigate how each jurisdiction in these tracts spent ARPA money, and how the spending of that money affected the people who live there. 

We’ll look through public records from the following jurisdictions, which all serve disadvantaged populations.

We’re also curious to learn what we can from how Ashland University and Kno-Ho-Co-Ashland Community Action Commission spent ARPA money.

Though both are private organizations, the money received is public. Also, both institutions serve disadvantaged populations.

Ashland Source has filed, or plans to file, public records requests for that information.

Follow the money

This is a “follow-the-money” investigation. It’s not gotcha journalism. There will likely be some surprising revelations, but overall this project represents what we call public service journalism. 

John Hersey, an American journalist and writer, once said "journalism allows its readers to witness history."

Goebel, with GOPC, said money from the American Rescue Plan Act has the potential to be transformational. Her policy center partnered with Mansfield and other cities to create strategies on how to best use the money for its original intent.

"This is money that nobody was expecting," she said. "So we encouraged people to use it for its stated intention."

This project allows you, the Ashland County resident, to better understand how this "transformational" money was spent, in granular detail that otherwise might go unwitnessed.

There has been very little reporting on how this public money has been spent at the local level. As a taxpayer, you have the right to know how your school, township, village, city or county — or all of the above — spent this money. 

If you live in the areas described as “disadvantaged” — and you’d like to talk about that — please feel free to reach out. Email me at dillon@ashlandsource.com or call 419-610-2100. 

You can also fill out this survey to let us know more about your experience with ARPA. The survey can be filled out anonymously, or you can leave your contact information. If you choose the latter, a reporter from Ashland Source may reach out to chat.

Reporting for this series was made possible by a grant from the Poynter Institute with support from the Joyce Foundation.

Sebastian Rosemont contributed to this report by building a GIS map of disadvantaged areas within Ashland County.