5 minute read
ARPA Funds Equal Gift
How can officials creatively use this opportunity to create stronger cities?
by Scott Paine, Florida League of Cities
One of the most familiar images of scientific discovery is that of Isaac Newton’s revelation about gravity that resulted from an apple falling on his head.
No pain, no gain, they say. While the image is familiar, most of us probably aren’t aware that this revelation also was an indirect consequence of an epidemic.
The apple fell during the two years Newton spent back in his native Lincolnshire because a bubonic plague epidemic was affecting Cambridge. Isolated from his student peers and the pressures of academic life, he experienced what he described as “the prime of my age for invention.”
Two years of quiet, of time to think deeply, to write and rewrite, to think again, to discover, to analyze, to test. Newton transformed our understanding of mathematics and much of the physical world. He might have done all that with or without the plague that drove him home. But the fact remains that his brilliant work began when he fled Cambridge. The plague, in other words, produced a windfall for humanity.
A windfall is “an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage,” according to merriam-webster.com. This common usage derives from its original meaning (from the time of Newton), which refers to the literal fall of something because of the wind. If what falls is of value (like an apple), the object is a literal and figurative windfall, a product of the forces of nature and an unearned gift to humans.
Like Newton centuries ago, no small number of us have received a windfall born of a plague. When we locked down in March 2020, few had a sense of how bitter the months ahead would be, how many of us would lose family and friends to the disease and livelihoods to the economic shock. Even fewer of us, I suspect, anticipated any windfalls.
Yet unarguably, and not in any way to minimize the tragedies, windfalls have come.
For some, this windfall took the form of an unexpected business opportunity. Online retailers, delivery services and virtual platform providers, for example, clearly have reaped windfall profits as we hunkered down, ordered out and logged in remotely. Individually, many of us received personal windfalls in the form of stimulus checks, expanded unemployment benefits or deferrals on required minimum distributions. Even our cities are receiving windfalls from the federal government that no one could have anticipated in March of last year. All these are, oddly, thanks to the brutal pandemic.
For municipalities especially, the analogy of Newton’s plague induced time of private study does not end with the material windfall of an apple or federal funds.
As a result of the plague, Newton had two years to concentrate his efforts on the problems of physics and mathematics on which he would build his reputation. Similarly, with the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, every city in the United States has been given not only unanticipated resources but time.
The last time the federal government jumped in with a major fiscal stimulus to revitalize the economy, the emphasis was on speed. The phrase “shovel-ready” entered into our collective vocabulary. Local and state governments rifled through their long lists of planned infrastructure projects to find those that could move from concept to concrete in days, weeks or a few months. There wasn’t time for much reflection or strategic thinking.
I’m not arguing that the emphasis on swift expenditure was wrong. The circumstances our nation (and the world) faced may well have justified the prioritization of action over planning. Demand had collapsed. Without demand, the engines of the national and global economies were running on fumes.
But it did lead to some interesting and, perhaps, disappointing choices. For example, in the area of transportation infrastructure, no small amount of federal money went into resurfacing projects. Because resurfacing involves little in the way of design, engineering, land acquisition and public participation, it could be undertaken quickly and meet the shovel-ready requirement.
By contrast, many infrastructure projects require some or all of those activities. Unless a government just happened to have completed all of those phases at precisely the moment the federal funds were becoming available, many critically important projects simply weren’t ready for the shovel.
Don’t get me wrong. Tight budgets often have meant that motorists endure rough roads rather than smooth rides as resurfacing cycles are extended. Delayed resurfacing also can mean damage to the road base, leading to more costly repairs. The burst of funding was a welcome opportunity to catch up.
But it also is true that there were other, perhaps more critically important, projects that officials at the local and state level would have undertaken instead of resurfacing if only the federal requirements had allowed them to. There were (and are) bridges in need of repair or replacement, dangerous stretches of highway in need of safety improvements, public transit services in need of expansion in frequency or routes. As important as resurfacing is, many officials viewed these other projects as more important but could not fund them.
Transportation is, of course, only one area of public investment where the shovel-ready requirement had the effect of distorting project priorities. The large expenditures on shovel-ready projects served a public purpose, but they also might be viewed as missed opportunities to deliver even greater public goods.
The ARPA funds create an entirely new environment for municipalities. We have years, not weeks or months, to encumber the funds and somewhat more time to expend them. We don’t need to cull quickly through our current list of capital projects to find an existing initiative that fits the criteria; we have time to reflect, to consider what we could do and should do that we haven’t planned to do because we couldn’t imagine how we’d pay for it.
In other words, the ARPA has given us not one but two windfalls: additional financial capacity and time.
I think all of us would be wise to step back, pause and consider more deeply and creatively the opportunities these windfalls provide. There’s time to gain a fuller sense of the tragic impact of the pandemic on our residents, our businesses, our sense of community. There is time to invite our residents and business owners into dialogue with our municipal leaders, to seek out voices we often don’t hear, to ask questions and wait for answers.
The plague gave humanity a windfall by focusing the mind of a brilliant young man. Perhaps this pandemic has given us another windfall: an opportunity to move our cities forward in ways we have never imagined.
Scott C. Paine, Ph.D., is Director of Leadership Development and Education for FLC University. He previously worked at the University of Tampa as Associate Professor of Communication and Government and served for eight years on Tampa’s City Council. He can be contacted at spaine@ flcities.com. Go to drscottpaine.com to read Scott Paine's regular blog.
