We got $18 million dollars from the federal government during Covid. This is called ARPA money. It all has to be obligated by December 31st, 2024. Not spent, but under contract.
Here’s how we spent our ARPA money:
Some of the projects have come in under budget:
The can ban came in $89K under budget?! But… but we didn’t get rid of the cans…
Anyway, we’ve rounded up all the scraps and put them back in the pot to hand out.
(True story: my mom would collect all the slivers of bar soaps, and put them in a mesh bag to use as one big bag of bar soap. It’s gross! You should try it some time! The connection being that we are putting all the last little ARPA slivers into a mesh bag to use as one final ARPA slushfund.)
So what should we do with this last $246K?
Here’s what City staff recommends:
Every time this comes up, over the past four years, Alyssa Garza argues for direct aid to neighbors. We should use covid money on things like rental assistance, utility assistance, emergency grants for car repairs, etc. But somehow these things never materialize.
The conversation gets bogged down.
– Is it because council doesn’t agree on the direction they give staff?
– Is it because it’s very hard to implement these direct aid measures?
– Is it because the federal restrictions make it really hard for residents to find all the correct paperwork and documentation?
It goes in circles for awhile.
Eventually Alyssa convinces everyone to try to redirect the Dunbar bathroom money towards emergency rental assistance. If staff can’t make that work, Plan B is still the Dunbar bathrooms. B is for Bathrooms.
The San Marxist 