City Councilwoman Marie Carrubba, D-Ward IV, believes the American Rescue Plan Act funding has made a “huge” impact on Jamestown residents. Pictured, from left, are City Councilman William Reynolds, R-Ward V, Councilwoman Marie Carrubba, D-Ward IV, and Regina Brackman, D-Ward III.
P-J photo by Timothy Frudd
As Jamestown officials decide how to spend the rest of the city’s ARPA funding, Councilwoman Marie Carrubba is stressing the importance of communicating with the city administration.
In addition to directly helping city residents with a variety of projects, Carrubba said the city has also been able to take care of structural things that it has not been able to in the past due to financial constraints. She added that the ARPA funding has been a “tremendous help” to the city, especially considering the city has been very close to its constitutional taxing limit. She explained the ARPA funds have allowed the city to both directly help residents and take care of much-needed city improvements.
“I think right now, we’re still looking at some of the projects that were proposed,” said Carrubba, D-Ward 4. “We are waiting for the administration. There were some projects proposed from the Parks Department, haven’t received final figures on any of those items.”
Carrubba said she has also been “very vocal” about the need for the city to consider using the remaining funding to address maintenance projects at City Hall, as well as other city properties that the city typically does not have the funding for.
According to Carrubba, another possible way to allocate the remaining funding would be to use a portion of the funds in place of a bonding proposal Mayor Eddie Sundquist mentioned at a recent City Council meeting. Carrubba said she asked the mayor at the meeting what the city administration is proposing for a bond. Before considering whether to use bond funding or ARPA funding, she is interested to know what the bond money would be utilized for.
“I haven’t had a response yet from the mayor’s office,” she said. “I’m waiting to hear what the bonding proposal is, whether any of the ARPA funding could be used to not have to bond because anything we don’t have to bond for will save the taxpayers money. That’s a concern, so I’m still in a kind of in a waiting pattern. We have some things that need to be answered by the administration before I can decide what the best use of the funds are at this point, but the bonding is one of my primary focuses.”
Asked about the impact of the ARPA funding on the Jamestown residents, Carrubba told The Post-Journal that the impact has been “huge.”
“I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve received,” she said. “We had to go back many times to get an accurate final figure for the senior rehabilitation project, but I think all the seniors we’re extremely pleased that they were able to do things, especially safety things like roof, issues.”
Carrubba explained that across the city, there were multiple instances of people having to use tarps on their roofs because they could not afford to repair the roofs. With the cost of materials skyrocketing and older homes with higher structures, Carrubba said many roofing jobs can be very expensive for homeowners in Jamestown.
“The people that are on fixed incomes have a difficult time taking care of those things, so it’s been great,” she said. “I think it’s been huge to help those individuals who want to maintain their property but haven’t had enough extra funds, much like the city, to always take care of it, so I think that’s a really tremendous help to the homeowners.”