Feds to Fund $8.5 million of College Hills Reconstruction

City Council will consider approving the reconstruction of College Hills Avenue from Avenue N to Loop 306.  The total project will cost $32.6 million with $8.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds.  This one project will use up over 51% of the city's ARPA funds.  

The American Rescue Plan includes an array of emergency aid to reduce the extreme hardship many people and businesses are experiencing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of this aid will be delivered to states, localities, and other governments, which will then use it to help people.

City Council considered this funding in a strategic planning session last June.

The City of San Angelo will use federal funds to bail it out for under-funding local infrastructure.  This council is trying to make up for the long term practice of putting off street, water and sewer line maintenance.  ARPA funds are a gift horse for the city. 

Federal funds supplanted local public health dollars nearly a decade ago.  The city "eliminated" its immunization and sexually transmitted disease clinics in order to apply for Medicare Section 1115 funding.  In reality city management parked clinic staff in another department and kept clinic equipment for a rapid restart after federal money arrived in 2013.  

Ample federal funds remain for the operation of the STD clinic.  The City's Bluebook accounting documents show the following:

1115 Waiver Expansion Grant--FY ended 2013 to 2021--Totaled     

Revenues           $1,433,946

Expenditures        $559,423

Excess                 $874,423

The city closed its federally subsidized public health clinic starting March 16, 2020.  It remained closed for fifteen months, reopening June 7, 2021.  Other health providers found a way to reopen and serve people during the pandemic.  Not the City of San Angelo.  It used clinic staff to contact trace, track and release COVID-19 cases.

The Omicron wave in our community is subsiding.  Will the remaining 49% of ARPA funding be used to patch large infrastructure holes or help people hurting as a result of the pandemic?  Extreme hardship remains in our community.