How should East St. Louis spend $36M in COVID relief? Here’s how residents can weigh in
Last month, East St. Louis received half of the roughly $36 million in federal funding for COVID-19 relief. Now, the city is soliciting the help of residents to determine how the money should be spent.
The city will host the first of a series of town hall meetings related to the American Rescue Plan funds on Friday night at the Clyde C. Jordan Senior Citizen Center. Mayor Robert Eastern III said the meetings are one of several ways the city plans to reach residents for their ideas.
Through East St. Louis’ We CARE plan, the city aims to canvass the area, have strategy meetings with corporate sponsors and engage youth in the city in an effort to use multiple options to hear residents’ thoughts on how they’d like the money to be used.
“We want to make sure that we’re showing transparency,” Eastern said. “That’s the first thing. We want to show transparency. We want to make sure that the citizens are involved. That’s why we’re making (an) overt effort (of) going out and doing canvassing, knocking on doors, asking the questions. What do they want to see this money used for?”
The name of the city’s We CARE plan alludes to the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act, which is not the same as the ARP Act. The American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law by President Biden in March, with funds starting to be disbursed in May. The federal program is in the process of allocating $350 billion for states, local governments, tribes and territories for pandemic relief and rebuilding stronger economies.
Recipients of the American Rescue Plan Act will receive funds in two rounds. On June 9, East St. Louis received half of its $36,379,844 allocation. The other $18 million will be allocated about a year after that.
East St. Louis is one of three metro-east cities to be allocated funds from the American Rescue Plan. Of the three cities, East St. Louis received the most money: Belleville received $15,792,501, and Alton received $21,639,201.
Funds for the American Rescue Plan can be spent on the following:
Support for public health expenditures (example: funding COVID-19 mitigation efforts)
Address negative economic impacts caused by COVID-19 (example: including economic harms to workers, households, small businesses, impacted industries, and the public sector)
Replace lost public sector revenue (example: using the funds to provide government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue experienced due to the pandemic)
Provide premium pay for essential workers
Invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure
Money from the American Rescue Plan cannot be used for pension funds or reducing net tax revenue. Recipients have until the end of 2024 to use the funds.
Eastern wants residents involved in recommending how the money should be spent within these categories as soon as possible.
“We’re going to be very strategic in how we spend this money and very transparent,” Eastern said. “We’re even going to have a citizens and community partnership committee that’ll be announced in August, and these citizens will be kind of my liaisons and my task force to also help me because we can’t knock on every door in the city.
“We’re going to make a real effort in knocking on doors and canvassing the area. I wanted to make sure that I did have a citizen-led team that also has their ear to the street in hearing things and being able to navigate the synergy from the citizens to city hall so that we can be able to carry out the wisdom of the citizens with this money.”
‘We want to hear their voices’
Since March, East St. Louis has had private strategy meetings with community partners to further help city officials decide how to appropriately spend the funds. Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville is one of the partners. The city recently partnered with the university to apply for a $20 million grant through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that’s aimed to address racial inequities across the globe, but the city didn’t receive the grant. However, the partnership laid the foundation for their work on the American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“Because it didn’t get funded, we didn’t want to lose the momentum, so the mayor asked us to continue to be involved because he knew there was going to be additional funding and more grant opportunities, so this whole strategic planning process is to help us help them identify appropriate grant opportunities to continue to pursue external funding,” said Diane Cox, director of grant development for the university.
Cox said the strategy meetings involve coming up with short- and long-term projects based on community input. She works with the economic development and tourism subcommittee.
Cox applauds Eastern’s planning efforts for the federal funding.
“This whole strategic planning process and the breadth of community involvement that he’s got and the outreach he continues every single day is great,” Cox said.
Larita Rice-Barnes, of East St. Louis, is the pastor of Empowerment of Grace, which has branches in East St. Louis and St. Louis. She’s also the executive director of the Metro East Organizing Coalition, a faith-based group that’s involved in tackling gun violence in the city. Rice-Barnes wants at least 2% of the American Rescue Plan Act money to be used for trauma crisis services.
“Our families in East St. Louis and the surrounding areas, particularly the Black communities, have been deeply affected by gun violence,” Rice-Barnes said. “I like to talk about gun violence in a sense of how it is a derivative of systemic oppression, systemic racism and how our communities have been ranked and deprived of resources, and so now that these resources have been released ... we’re saying with those funds, there are services that the family needs around trauma and crisis.”
She’d also like to see the funds be used for housing and economic development, particularly in the downtown area.
“We have an amazing downtown in East St. Louis that is right at the highway at the bridge,” Rice-Barnes said. “Back when I was growing up...you had all these stores that was there that we went (to) and hung out at and it was lively, and so I would like to see the downtown area redeveloped.”
Suggestions from residents like Rice-Barnes is what Eastern says are most important for him when planning for the funds.
“My priority is whatever the citizens want first,” Eastern said. “That’s my first priority. More importantly, we need to educate them on what we can and what we can’t use the money for. We don’t want to just deal with streets. We want to be strategic on what we use this money for.”
He hopes the funds can lead to a “Black renaissance” in East St. Louis. And that starts with listening to residents.
“We want to hear their voices as we start to plan for this money,” Eastern said. “We need to hear them. We need to hear what they want, so we can put it into context of the policies and procedures that we can spend this on.”
Below are the dates for upcoming meetings for the American Rescue Plan Act funding. The mayor’s office chose different times for each one to accommodate residents’ schedules:
Friday, July 23 - 6:30 p.m. at Clyde C. Jordan Senior Citizen Center: 6755 State Street; East St. Louis, IL 62203
Saturday, August 21- 10 a.m. at East St. Louis City Hall: 301 River Park Drive; East St. Louis, IL 62201
Wednesday, September 15 - 6 p.m. Location TBD
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This story was originally published July 22, 2021 at 10:25 AM.
