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THE FINAL WORD
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Rescue Plan Funding
AN ARGUMENT FOR BREAKING THE CYCLE.
BY FRED PARRY
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) signed earlier this year by President Biden is providing more than $5 billion in economic relief and stimulus to local governments in the state of Missouri.
Of that lump sum, Columbia and Boone County will share approximately $60 million. This once-in-a-generation influx of cash has the real potential of being transformative, depending, of course, on how the funds are ultimately used.
As with the CARES Act funding distributed last year, there will be a significant amount of political pressure on the Columbia City Council and the Boone County Commission to divide these funds equally among the dozens of worthy local charities and social service agencies providing services here locally. Every one of these charitable organizations will be able to make a compelling case on how to use these funds for the underprivileged and marginalized segments of our local population. Unfortunately, there’s an insatiable appetite in our community when it comes to feeding, housing, educating, protecting, validating and mainstreaming our most vulnerable citizens.
By my way of thinking, using these funds to shore up local social service organizations would be a mistake of epic proportions. When you consider that the United Way gives out nearly $3 million annually on top of the nearly $10 million given out each year by the Boone County’s Children’s Services Fund, you begin to grasp the magnitude of the dependency these various agencies have. There’s a cynical side of me that believes that in spite of all the money we spent, we’ve actually made very little progress in helping the homeless or leveling the playing field for the marginalized among us.
Boone County will receive $35 million in ARPA funds and the City of Columbia will receive an additional $25 million. I think it’s safe to say our community will never see this kind of financial windfall repeated in our lifetimes. Imagine for a moment what might happen if the city of Columbia and Boone County decided to pool their allocations and use the nearly $60 million in funding to create the kind of transformative change that would have the potential to dramatically change the odds for people living in poverty in Boone County.
There are, in fact, two things that are typically effective in breaking the cycle of poverty in our society. The first is home ownership and the second is education. What would happen if we used this $60 million to create home ownership for lowincome families, struggling veterans and those with physical limitations? This kind of money could build more than 400 starter homes and the subsequent proceeds could contribute to a perpetual endowment that would build homes for generations to come. Once a family breaks out of the vicious cycle of poverty, the generations that follow have far greater odds of staying out of poverty.
Community leaders in the city of Springfield and Greene County are urging elected officials to use ARPA funds to acquire hundreds of acres of land that could be made shovel-ready with utilities and necessary infrastructure, making it easy for companies to expand or relocate to the area while creating a staggering number of new jobs. Part of their resources will be dedicated to vocational training to make sure workers are trained and ready to work when those new jobs come. These are transformational changes that will affect generations of Missourians.
As a progressive community, we give a lot of lip service to the idea of helping our neighbors rise out of poverty, however, we too often fail to take the most basic steps to create permanent change. Of the 183,000 residents living in Boone County, more than 31,000 of us are living at or below the federal poverty level. When you live in poverty, you’re more likely to be overwhelmed by the challenges associated with housing, childcare, transportation and just having access to the most basic needs most of us take for granted. What if our elected officials used these ARPA funds to permanently change the odds?
I’m not getting my hopes up. The path of least resistance in a situation such as this is to please as many people as possible, funding the pet projects of the plurality. We need to hold our local leaders to a higher standard and encourage them to look at the larger possibilities that come with this oncein-a-lifetime opportunity.
Fred Parry
Founder & Publisher Emeritus fred@insidecolumbia.net
