When taking inventory of how responsibly Mahoning Valley governments and school districts have spent their $250 million in American Rescue Plan funding over the past three years, the results are a mixed bag.

To be sure, the federal COVID-19 relief funding totaling $1.9 trillion nationwide brought some substantial longlasting gains for communities in our region. On the other hand, some of the appropriations were at best questionable in living up to the goal of the gargantuan program to recover from the deadly pandemic and to bring about positive long-lasting transformational change.

We have taken issue, for example, with some local governments’ decisions to parcel out these once-in-a-lifetime grants as small rewards to ward council members, as was the case in both Youngstown and Warren. Some of those pet projects yielded minimal impact on the vast majority of residents.

Tossing tens of thousands of dollars at such initiatives as relocating a Boardman children’s theater troupe or repairing a golf-cart path hardly lives up to the lofty goals of ARP. After all, the funding was designed primarily to heal the wounds of the pandemic and to affect the greatest number of people, improve the quality of life and assist in business growth and economic development in communities of all sizes across the nation.

Fortunately, a good deal of the expenditures, particularly those in the past year, have been constructive. Projects to improve and update aging infrastructure and to promote repopulation of our region will have enduring impact.

In Boardman, for example, a $1 million allocation to help pay for the Forest Lawn Sanitary Sewer Park along Market Street will go far toward alleviating chronic flooding in the township. It brings additional benefits by also including a public park where an abandoned school building once stood.

In Warren and Howland, a $2.7 million ARP grant will bolster long overdue road, sewer and other infrastructure improvements in one of the most heavily industrialized sectors of the Valley, the Golden Triangle.

And in Youngstown, millions of dollars in ARP funding is expected to get rid of the last vestiges of aging, abandoned housing, some of which have been centers of blight for decades. Once the demolition is complete, ARP funds also will help finance new home construction and remodeling to help reverse decades of population loss in the Valley’s largest urban center.

But now that the program is nearing its finish line, local governments and school districts must take note of some important deadlines.

For schools in our region that benefited from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief segment of ARP, all dollars awarded must be approved by Sept. 30. For local governments, plans for spending all funding must be in place no later than Dec. 31. (Actual spending of those funds can wait until 2026.)

With that in mind, communities that still have outstanding dollars to allocate must do so promptly and responsibly. If not, they must be returned to the federal government.

Those communities still seeking ways to deplete their ARP accounts constructively should look to Youngstown for guidance. Just last week, city council approved transferring the remaining $10 million of its $81 million allocation to the city’s general fund as a reserve fund and for potential future uses without violating federal guidelines.

On balance, then, most of the Mahoning Valley’s appropriations of ARP dollars over the past three years has lived up to the letter and spirit of the program. As a result, its tangible benefits, much like the benefits from the Works Progress Administration after the Great Depression, will leave indelible imprints on our region for decades to come.

editorial@vindy.com