This article is open to all free of cost, as the reporting for this entire series was made possible by a grant from the Poynter Institute with support from the Joyce Foundation.
Read all of our reporting on the American Rescue Plan Act’s impact in Ashland County here. And if you have any questions for the reporter, send him an email at dillon@ashlandsource.com.
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ASHLAND — Nearly all of Ashland’s American Rescue Plan Act money has been spent.
The city received a total of $2.1 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money, delivered in two chunks in 2021 and 2022.
Here’s where the dollars have fallen since July 2023, when officials first began spending the money.
That means Ashland still has 20% of its total — or $428,988 — that remains unencumbered.
How will the rest of it be spent? It’s a big question that remains unanswered.
The city has until Dec. 31 to obligate the money and another two years to spend it all. If that money goes unencumbered, ARPA rules dictate a clawback, or a return of the federal money.
But before the how question can be answered, we must answer another question: How can the money be used? What do the rules say?
The city's ARPA allocation came from a pot of money called the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund. There are rules defining how this money can be spent, including these general uses:
- Public health and negative economic impacts of the pandemic
- Premium pay to essential workers
- Government services to respond to revenue loss because of the pandemic
- Water, sewer and broadband infrastructure
- Disaster relief
- Surface transportation
- Community Development Block Grants
These bullet points come from the Treasury's "Final Rule," issued in January 2022.
However, the National League of Cities, an organization that represents cities, towns, and villages in the United States, said the Final Rule is non-exhaustive.
"Municipalities may use their funds in any way that responds directly to a pandemic impact," reads an NLC report on the Treasury's Final Rule.
Ashland Mayor Matt Miller, when asked, said the money could go toward funding the construction of a public transit headquarters. But the fate of that project remains unclear.
At this point, city officials don't know how the rest of the money will be spent.
Most likely, however, the ARPA dollars will be used toward city infrastructure projects.
Why? Well, let’s back up for a moment.
CARES vs. ARPA
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, President Donald Trump signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) — a $2.2 trillion stimulus package designed to boost the country’s halted economy.
The city received a total of $1.2 million from the CARES Act. Most of that money went toward purchasing city vehicles to enhance social distancing efforts and a new ventilation system in the municipal building.
The city also designated roughly $200,000 to Ashland businesses in the form of $5,000 grants. Business owners could apply for the money, and a total of 42 received the funds.
Miller said his mentality was different when CARES Act money hit city coffers.
“That is definitely where, I will admit, my mindset was different. I looked at it as ‘who’s disadvantaged?’ And (businesses) were forced to close. These were their livelihoods and many of ours are, quite candidly, are young people with young families. That was a way to hopefully help in some way,” he said.
The Treasury intended that the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program — the pot of ARPA money sent to local governments like Ashland — be used to “support a truly equitable recovery and address health and economic disparities, exacerbated by the pandemic, in the most underserved communities.”
To define who those people might be, the federal government built a map using 2010 census data (2020 numbers weren’t yet completed at the time). Below is a map that zooms in on Ashland County.
There are three areas within the city that qualify as disadvantaged areas.
Lost in translation?
But that message — targeting “disadvantaged” populations — didn’t necessarily trickle down to local leaders, Miller said.
“When it came to this American Rescue Plan money, if I’m honest, everything was always about infrastructure,” he said.
The mayor said the guidance on how to spend the money struck a different tune than the federal government’s.
“I don’t remember being in any seminar on how to spend that money where the focus was using this (money) to target disadvantaged people,” the mayor said.
We'll dive deeper in the third installment in this series on how exactly city officials spent ARPA money. But two of the city's four ARPA expenditures (roughly $645,000) went to projects located in disadvantaged areas of the city.
It's just that decisions weren't made through the "disadvantaged" lens, so to speak. The lens, instead, was one of longevity.
“We didn’t want to squander the money. We wanted to use it on projects that would have a long lifespan and an impact for years to come,” he said.
Different approaches
Decisions surrounding the city’s spending of ARPA money were never codified. Those decisions were made without input from residents and council.
Dan Lawson, an at-large city councilman, said that simply reflects a different approach — not a desire to exclude residents.
“I don’t think (council) ever discussed what we could spend American Rescue Plan money on,” Lawson said. “The mayor and finance director would come to us and say ‘we have this project' and, by the way, we have American Rescue money to spend it on.
“It was more of a needs-based approach,” the councilman said.
Lawson said it would have been “fun to brainstorm” ways to spend the $2.1 million, but he doesn’t object to the way it’s been done so far.
So the question remains: How will the rest of the money be spent? And will the city involve residents in those decisions?
'A public forum might be a good idea'
Lawson said holding a public forum to ask residents their opinions sounds like a good idea.
“A public forum might be a good idea, to welcome feedback from the community,” he said. “But people might want the city to address their own pet project, like fixing a curb, or their sidewalks … We won't be able to do all of those things.
"But I would welcome feedback from the community on how to use the rest of the money to benefit the city.”
If you ask residents, they might agree.
An Ashland Source survey has found that, despite respondents' relative lack of knowledge about ARPA, the vast majority of 64 city respondents — 84% — reported feeling voiceless when it came to decisions surrounding how the money was spent. Only four people fell in the middle, and five people reported feeling heard.
You can still share your thoughts by filling out the survey. Answers can be anonymous. You can also participate in the poll below.
In Part II of this series, we'll hear from two residents who share their thoughts on how the city's ARPA money was spent and how the rest could be spent. We'll also dissect a survey that shows some interesting insight.
Part III will follow the money and answer the question: How did the city spend $1.6 million of its ARPA dollars already?
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.
