$21M in ARPA spending approved
The Common Council voted to approve $21M in ARPA funds on March 15, 2022
I.
What if you not only threw a $100,000 party but promised everyone who came a chance to help spend $21 million dollars of your money…and no one showed up?
This is kind of how I feel about the City’s efforts to solicit community input on their use of ARPA funds.
ARPA stands for the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.7 Trillion stimulus bill passed in March, 2021. It included about $350 Billion (but maybe more? It’s a little confusing) for state and local governments to mitigate the shock of the pandemic. Wauwatosa received approximately $24 Million, of which $21 Million was allocated by vote of the Common Council on March 15, 2022.
You might imagine that it would be pretty exciting to decide how to spend $21 million dollars. If someone handed me that amount of money, I would probably take a vacation in Hawaii just to think about it. Suppose you had been considering refinishing the basement in your house: with $21 million dollars you could buy fifty basements, or at least a house with a basement that’s already finished, or even a house that’s so big you don’t need a finished basement at all. And that’s if you are literally the most unimaginative person in the world trying to figure out how to spend a windfall.
Of course, if you think about that $21 million as a percentage of the city’s approximately $70 million annual budget, then it’s a less exciting. That’s like someone with a household income of $70,000 receiving $21,000. Nothing to sneeze at, but you’re not buying fifty basements. And it turns out that helping a city decide how to spend $21 million dollars is really not exciting at all. We know this, because one of the first things the city did spend the money on was a consultant to help them figure out how to spend the rest of it.
And for $100,000, the consultant made a website, TalkTosa.org, for residents to share their stories about how the pandemic affected them and to make suggestions for how the money could be spent. These suggestions and stories were then aggregated and became one of multiple inputs into the process of deciding where to put the money. If you never visited TalkTosa.org to share your stories or suggestions, you’re not alone. The website had 2,000 visits between October and December, 2021, when input was collected. This was one of several disappointing stats:
Seventy-four visitors downloaded a document on this website. These documents were primarily the Funding Proposal Questionnaire and the ARPA Federal Eligibility Summary.
Visitors posted 9 stories posted about how they were affected by the pandemic.
441 visitors posted 99 comments and 731 ‘likes’ in support of 61 funding ideas. The most ‘liked’ funding ideas had to do with:
Addressing structural issues along Schoonmaker Creek (63 likes)
Increase funding for the Wauwatosa home repair program (33 likes)
Permanently protect remaining County grounds (30 likes)
Increase the number of affordable rental units (29 likes)
More outdoor spaces (29 likes)
Water infrastructure and lead abatement (28 likes)
Rental assistance program (28 likes)
Establish a land trust for affordable housing (28 likes)
45 funding proposals were submitted (but this included the ones from City Staff, and I didn’t count how many came from residents).
In addition to the website, the consultant held 10 stakeholder focus group sessions which were attended by 64 people. Seven individuals were interviewed as part of series of Key Stakeholder Interviews. And two Community Input Meetings were attended by a total of 21 participants.
As Ald. Koforth remarked: “I’m extremely disappointed in the money we spent on the consultant, because we didn't get, at least I didn't get, what we thought we'd get out of them.”
One of the city staff members did try to put a positive spin on the whole thing. He said they were actually pretty satisfied with the number of participants in the focus groups—they wanted 8-12 participants per focus group and got between 6 and 8—but then even he had to agree that the public meetings “were failures.”
II.
Given the paucity of public input, how did they choose to spend the money?
Well, there were strings attached. According to federal guidelines, they could use the money to support the city’s Public Health response to the pandemic by, for example, funding covid-19 mitigation efforts or medical expenses. They could use it to address negative economic impacts to, e.g., workers or small businesses. They could use it to replace lost revenue; to provide premium pay for essential workers; or to support water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure. Notably the Treasury expanded some of the potential uses for these funds in January, 2022, but this occurred after the city had developed a set of recommendations for the Common Council, so none of their recommendations were based on these expanded guidelines.
They were not allowed to use the money to reduce taxes, contribute to pensions, make debt payments, or save for a rainy day. But I’m not sure how they would determine this exactly. For instance, what would they say if you spent ARPA funds on some infrastructure project instead of funding it through the regular budget and then took that extra money in the budget and socked it away or used it to pay off a debt? Are you supposed to budget another infrastructure project in its place? But presumably that infrastructure project, if not for the ARPA funds, would have gone in some future budget. So then what? Is it infrastructure projects all the way down?
In any case, the city took all these funding proposals, rated them according to a number of evaluation criteria, recommended a cross-section of the more highly rated proposals across a number of priority funding areas decided upon during a workshop held with the Common Council, and then the Common Council voted on them.
Specifically, in descending order of cost, they approved:
West Zone Pumping Station $5,250,000
The water utility has two pumping districts—east and west. The east has three pumping stations and two water towers. The west has only one of each (essentially, see above). If the single pump fails, the drinking water supply could become contaminated. They’re going to add another pump.
Implementing Active Tosa Plan $4,000,000
In accordance with the Active Tosa: Park, Trail, Open-Space, and Recreational Facilities Master Plan from 2017.
68th Street Water Main Relay $2,500,000
The water main under 68th St. from State St. to Wisconsin Ave. is too small and almost 120 years old. The water laterals (pipe connecting a home to the water main) are lead and the publicly owned portion (but not the homeowner-owned portion) would be replaced with HDPE (a type of plastic). This will improve the reliability of water service to the southeast corner of the city.
Potter Road Water Main Relay $1,800,000
The city got a second water tower in 2013 for its western pressure district so that it could have two online at the same time to provide reliable water service during periods of high demand (e.g., like firefighting) but it never worked right. They could only put one online at a time. They think the problem is an old piece of pipe. They’re going to replace the pipe.
Wauwatosa Housing Rehabilitation Program $1,750,000
It can be expensive to maintain old homes. This fund will loan money to low- and moderate-income households at 0% to conduct home repairs and that would be paid back when the house is sold. The maximum loan amount per household would be around $50,000. This is an expansion of an already-existing CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) program.
Mayfair Road Water Main Lining $1,050,000
There’s a single 16” diameter pipe providing water to about 1,750 properties in the northeast corner of the City. This water main broke last year and caused problems. A pipe lining will increase the strength of the water main which is good because there’s going to be a lot of shaking when WiDOT rebuilds a bridge in the area.
2023-2026 Budget Stabilization $950,000
Make up for reduced revenues due to pandemic.
COVID-19 Mitigation and Pandemic Planning $824,317
Mostly what you would expect.
Remodeling at Wauwatosa Fire Stations 52 & 53 $700,000
Turn the bunk rooms into individual sleeping quarters.
Substance Use Prevention and Harm Reduction Program $577,000
There were 13 alcohol-related deaths and 6 overdose deaths in Wauwatosa in 2020. A Substance Use Specialist will be hired to administer 4 programs: “a pilot needle exchange program, an overdose prevention program, referrals to substance use treatment, and community-wide substance use prevention and awareness.”
CDA Small Business Building Improvement Program $500,000
Offer up to $15,000 grants to individual small businesses that deferred maintenance or renovations during the pandemic.
Contingency $500,000
Just in case there are budget overruns on infrastructure projects.
Potter Road Solar Photovoltaic System $375,000
The primary pumping station for the city’s western pressure district requires a lot of electricity. Putting solar panels nearby will save $18,000 per year. Five seconds of googling says the average payback time for residential solar installations is 8-9 years, so the 20-year payback time ($375k/$18k) seems long but who knows.
Community Health Workers to Address Youth Mental Health $350,543
Hire and train 5 Community Health Workers to provide mental health information and resources to Wauwatosa youth.
Public Library COVID-19 Equity Collection $272,000
To purchase books and materials on various topics including: homeschooling, parenting, home ownership, career development, entrepreneurship, and “Children’s and Young Adult materials by and featuring BIPOC, LGBTQ+, persons with disabilities, and other minorities to reflect the diversity of our service community and allowing children to see themselves reflected in books.”
Electronic Health Records System - Wauwatosa Health Department $119,000
Self-explanatory.
Update and Secure SCADA Control Computers $80,000
The city uses software and sensors to remotely monitor wastewater flow in the city so that it doesn’t accidentally backflow and flood your basement. These are old and a cyber-security risk. They will replace them.
Senior Ride Program through Hart Park Senior Center $70,000
Expand the already existing senior ride program to all senior centers in Milwaukee County
Village BID Director $60,000
Temporarily make Business improvement district Director a full-time position to jumpstart tourism and bring visitors back to Wauwatosa
Reporting and Administrative Support $50,000
No details.
Hybrid meeting technology for city meetings $35,000
Allow more of the citizen committees to hold meetings remotely.
Total $21,312,860
Overall, by category:
III.
I’ll leave it at that for now, but there are a couple different directions one could go from here:
The Wauwatosa School District received about $3M dollars in ARPA funds. What are they spending it on?
There was a lot of discussion and consternation about putting $1.5-5M dollars toward something called a Community Land Trust to have the city purchase homes which they could then mortgage to low income families. It was voted on two or three times, each time it was defeated, and it didn’t make it into the final ordinance. But what is this? Will it come up again?
Implementing the Active Tosa Plan was the second largest item at $4M and 16% of total ARPA finds, but it was added at the last minute during the March 8 Committee of the Whole meeting the week before the final vote. It was not part of the March 1 Wauwatosa American Rescue Funding Proposal and it was neither recommended nor vetted by City staff while all of the others were. I think there’s a legitimate reason for this: parks projects were not originally eligible for ARPA funding until the federal government expanded the eligibility rules in January but by this time most of the work of vetting and recommending proposals had already been completed by the City. Nevertheless, it was a quick decision and will supposedly be in accordance with the 2017 “Active Tosa: Park, Trail, Open-Space, and Recreational Facilities Master Plan.” But what’s in that plan?
There are 10,000 lead laterals in the city, and many people expressed interest in funding lead abatement projects but no ARPA funds were allocated to it. Why not and what is the city doing about it?
So, I may look into some of these in the future.