St. Albans City should use its roughly $2 million share of American Rescue Plan Act funds to prepare for the effects of climate change, expand access to mental health services, and invest in local kids and the arts, residents told the City Council Tuesday.
City Manager Dominic Cloud said officials will use the public’s suggestions, as well as input from councilors, to determine how the federal dollars will be used in the city.
“There’s more alignment than one might think between the council’s thinking and what we were hearing from the public,” Cloud said after the meeting.
The American Rescue Plan Act, which became law in March, designated nearly $180 million to Vermont municipalities through Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Funds — part of the $1.25 billion that went to the state government.
While municipalities have broad discretion over how to use this money, the U.S. Treasury has laid out four general categories officials must spend it on:
- To respond to the Covid-19 public health emergency or its economic impacts
- To provide premium pay to essential workers
- To make up for reductions in local revenue
- To invest in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure
Any uses not related to infrastructure must be tied either to Covid-19 relief or projects in the city’s qualified census tract, which runs from Main Street to its western border, Chip Sawyer, the city’s planning and development director, said at the meeting Tuesday.
In qualified census tracts, at least half of the households have incomes less than 60% of the area median income, or the poverty rate is at least 25%, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The City Council has approved spending $12,500 from the American Rescue Plan Act to repair a house in the qualified census tract that has a “laundry list of code violations,” Cloud said. Half of the money will be a grant to the property owner, and half will be a loan.
If the project is successful, officials may create a program to repair more houses in the area. Cloud said that would make homeowners and their neighborhoods safer.
“It’s a win-win for everybody,” he said.
People at Tuesday’s meeting said the city should leverage its federal dollars for projects focused on climate change adaptation, with one person saying it’s important that the city plan for future population growth as a result of climate migration.
The city also should improve the police department’s ability to respond to mental health emergencies, resident Zach Scheffler said, such as by hiring additional crisis response staff. Scheffler said the department’s embedded clinician from Northwestern Counseling and Support Services has been an asset to officers and residents, and the pandemic’s lasting psychological impacts will continue to make her work important.
“It all comes down to money in so many of these conversations — where are we going to get the money to hire these people to do this work?” Scheffler said. “I feel like this is a particularly unique, special and one-time opportunity to invest in public health.”
Cloud said the council supports hiring an additional crisis response worker for the police department and will evaluate whether that position should be funded through the city’s regular budget or an outside source, such as federal dollars.
Covid-19 relief funds also should be used to support children in the city, such as through additional after-school programs, resident Mareesa Miles told the council Tuesday.
Reier Erickson said the city should consider using federal money for new arts programs, such as a theater company. The City Hall auditorium is “bare bones,” he said, and could benefit from additional investment that would allow larger shows to be hosted there.
“That sort of thing drives in revenue. It brings people into the city,” he said. “If those people come see a show, they have dinner before. They have drinks afterward.”
