Youngstown city council approves doubling of ARP money for each ward
For months, the city of Youngstown has been asking residents about how to spend more than $80 million from the American Recovery Plan.
For almost as long, Mayor Brown and others have been meeting to narrow it all down and decide where the money will go.
"That plan has not come to fruition yet," said Third Ward councilwoman Samantha Turner on Wednesday, insisting that wasn't enough time. She cast the lone 'no' vote to double the money for each ward from $1 million to $2 million.
"We haven't really seen how we're going to track these dollars and how we're going to report them," Turner said. When we asked her what specifically was missing, she said "really just a timeline and getting more information out to us more expediently. And yes, they're meeting every two weeks and picking up momentum, but dollars are going out and people are in need."
Fifth Ward councilwoman Lauren McNally says the opposite is true.
"We keep talking about wanting to have 'shovel-ready' projects for this money - I've got a whole list of them," McNally said. "I don't want to wait any longer."
With the money needing to be spoken for by the end of 2024, McNally sees it as a race against time the city must win.
"There hasn't been a significant investment in the wards in years...in a way that changes, that isn't just reactive, that's actually proactive and planned out."
A final roadmap for the money is still weeks or more away, making it clear there remains more planning to do.
Council did, however, approve some ARP spending Wednesday, appropriating $129,000 for ACTION (Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods) to buy a mobile food truck, and $3.9 million toward "general government services for the replacement of lost revenue due to the COVID-19 emergency".