from cleveland.com: Lakewood City Council awards $1.5 million in ARPA funds

By John Benson, special to cleveland.com

LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- After three months of deliberation, City Council this week awarded $1,586,178 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to 16 projects.

“It was very much an auction-like process,” City Council President John Litten said.

“A project would be mentioned and we’d discuss how much of our shared funds we wanted to give towards it and how much individual council members wanted to give towards it as well.”

The list of projects receiving funds includes”

• Former Youth Building ($200,000)
• Cove Community Center Resiliency Hub ($300,000)
• LakewoodAlive Housing Outreach ($120,000)
• LakewoodAlive Small Business Support ($50,000)
• The Legal Aid Society ($150,000)
• Enhanced traffic calming ($150,000)
• Studio W. 117th ($50,000)
• Madison Park Master Plan implementation ($80,000)
• Acquire and improve ODOT property ($120,000)
• Pickleball court conversion ($30,000)
• Childcare assistance ($10,000)
• Holiday lighting expansion ($25,000)
• Madison HAWK Signal ($175,000)
• Madison Court Coalition Equipment & Storage ($5,000)
• Citizens Committee for the Lakewood Animal Shelter ($25,000)
• Lakewood Animal Safety & Welfare Advisory Board ($10,000)

“The final list of uses generated and voted on by council has my support and will have positive impacts for our residents,” Mayor Meghan George said.

“I appreciate the partnership shown by members of council in this effort to strategically spend these important one-time funds.”

Funding criteria included accessibility, quality of life, public safety, housing access and affordability.

“It’s an example of the sausage-making of legislation,” Litten said. “So it was challenging from that perspective because it was collaborative.

“You have seven different opinions, plus hearing from the administration and the entities that are applying -- all of those people bouncing around ideas to where we got thus far in terms of funding.

“Sometimes that got us to the amount that was being requested; sometimes it was short of that and some projects just weren’t ready. Council knowing it has another $1 million it looks to distribute helps in this equation, instead of saying ‘No, not yet’ to some of these entities.”

City Council was provided $3 million out of the city’s $47,219,575 ARPA funds for distribution to the community. The plan is to award $2 million this year, followed by $1 million next year.

“For the $2 million this year, we gave each council member $200,000 of their own to distribute, as well as another $600,000 to share,” he said.

Remaining is a roughly $500,000 balance earmarked for distribution this year.

“It really amounts to five different council members who still have some balances of funding to distribute,” he said.

“I expect that (to be announced) by the year-end.”

Source: cleveland.com - Lakewood City Council awards $1.5 million in ARPA funds