The Greensboro City Council voted to dump the $59.4 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds into the city’s general fund at the Tuesday, Aug. 16 meeting.
The city had enough eligible expenses to cover using all of the ARP funds to make up for lost revenue and additional expenses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, so there was no need to go through the process of having projects approved separately.
When this was discussed at the Thursday, Aug. 11 work session, several councilmembers expressed concern that the ARP funds would get lost in the general fund and not be used for specific projects.
However, Assistant City Manager Larry Davis assured the City Council that the accounting for the ARP funds would be kept separately and the $59.4 million would be spent on City Council approved projects.
The concern of city councilmembers appeared to be as much about the perception of how the ARP money was being spent as it was about technical accounting, and according to the city’s press release that confusion has already begun.
On the City of Greensboro website on the “City News” page under the headline “City Council Recap” it states, “One of the last items was an ordinance amending the General Fund and the General Capital Improvements Fund for $6.1M for maintenance needs, including roof replacement and HVAC improvements at the Central Library, roof and various maintenance repairs at the Greensboro Cultural Center and repairs and improvements to the City’s swimming pools.”
Technically that report is accurate, however, the City Council agreed to pay for these routine maintenance expenses with ARP funds. Since the ARP funds are now simply part of the general fund, spending the ARP funds on routine maintenance only requires amending the general fund budget and the general capital improvement fund budget.
District 3 City Councilmember Zack Matheny voted against spending the ARP funds on these items. Matheny did not participate in the Aug. 11 work session when the decision was made to spend ARP funds on routine maintenance because the work session was held a couple of hours before Matheny was sworn into office.
From reading the city report, Matheny’s objections make no sense because he objected to using ARP funds on maintenance items that should be paid for from the general fund, but technically the city was spending general fund money on routine maintenance, as Matheny said that it should, and the city report makes no mention of ARP funds.
It’s confusing and likely to get more confusing.
Save the confusion. Impose the KISS solution. Distribute the cash to the Resident Property Tax Relief Fund.
Greensboro , you get what you voted for. Any of you that voted any of these people back into office , shame on you . Your votes just gave them the go ahead to do exactly what they have been doing and run this great city into the ground and continue to hire people like the new city manager. SMH
Monkeys running the zoo.
This city council is going to waste this money and a lot more over the next four years. This money is tax payer money just from another pot, it should have been used to reduce taxes for the tax payers of Greensboro. I guess this makes it easier to fund some of those pet projects and fund non profits for those that sit on the council and influence the council. Four more years of spending money like a drunk train robber!
Has anyone noticed the deplorable poorly maintained roadways around the city? An example is the overgrown median that divides Wendover Avenue, and there are others. Where is the civic pride in how Greensboro presents itself? There is far too much attention on socially engineered projects, far too little on basic municipal service.