Carnegie’s business district in June 2019. (Photo by Jay Manning/PublicSource)
The Democrats’ American Rescue Plan Act is sending big money to Allegheny County’s many municipalities, with few restrictions on how to spend it
by Charlie Wolfson, Public Source
The $2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress last March injected an unforeseen and unprecedented amount of money into Allegheny County communities. The plan includes more than $300 million each for the Pittsburgh city government and the Allegheny County government.
But throughout the county — and mostly out of the headlines — is $130 million more from the American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA], in the form of smaller amounts given to most of the county’s 130 municipalities. The sums, ranging from just under $8,000 to more than $24 million represent a relatively large opportunity for these smaller boroughs and townships.
“For the bulk of these municipalities, it’s a really good shot in the arm because it’s basically money they weren’t expecting,” said George Dougherty, the director of the public policy and management program at the University of Pittsburgh.
PublicSource spoke to officials from seven municipalities in Allegheny County to learn what the infusion has meant for them so far.
“It’s huge for us,” said Penn Hills Municipal Manager Scott Andrejchak. “We’re able to do a lot of projects that we didn’t really know how we were going to fund.”
ARPA money, including the $17.1 million marked for Penn Hills, must be spent by 2024. The Treasury Department gave broad guidelines for how the money can be spent, which include replacing lost revenue, public health needs, premium pay for essential workers and infrastructure projects.
While every city and county regularly receives state and federal funding, the ARPA sums are historic in their scale.
Penn Hills’ allocation is 30% of the size of the municipality’s entire 2021 budget and amounts to more money than the city budgeted for police, EMS, public works and libraries combined in 2021.
The township created a plan to spend its money on a mix of sewer and stormwater projects, parks facilities, shoring up its police and EMS budgets and a host of other things.
Though former Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto was criticized in 2021 for allocating a lot of ARPA money to capital projects rather than items more closely tied to COVID-19 impacts like rental assistance and food aid, a number of smaller municipalities are spending the money in a similar fashion.
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