Yesterday, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously voted to approve and adopt the final round of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for the City of Minneapolis. Mayor Jacob Frey’s proposal for the remaining $43 million investment stayed 97% intact, with the City Council shifting allocations for only $1.3 million of the originally proposed investments. Today’s budget approval rounds out the total $271 million amount in federal funding awarded to the City of Minneapolis.
Frey’s $43 million investment features a strong emphasis on inclusive economic recovery ($11,055,000 million), affordable housing and homelessness response ($5,168,853), community safety ($6,460,000 million), and climate and public health ($11,580,476 million) measures. Approximately $8,790,000 million was also budgeted for enterprise investments such as recruitment and retention of City employees.
“This final round of ARPA funding will continue to support important work to reignite our city,” said Frey. “We’re moving forward to sustain our affordable housing programs, to prioritize violence prevention and emergency response, and to jumpstart our inclusive economic recovery work. It’s been a collaborative effort to plan for and deploy these crucial federal funds, and I know they are going towards support for our residents who have been most impacted by the pandemic.”
“I am proud to have collaborated with my colleagues on amendments to the Mayor’s Recommendations, such as a comprehensive engagement process on the next steps for the Third Precinct site, additional vans for the Behavioral Crisis Response teams, a pilot program to support small business in gaining compliance with our labor standards, a program to support businesses in making their single-stall restrooms gender-neutral, additional funding for technical support and outreach to small businesses, specific communications to our East African community, and street lighting improvements,” said Council Member Emily Koski, Chair of the Budget Committee. “There are no shortages of tremendous challenges facing the City of Minneapolis, and our communities, as we begin to recover from the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic – and I look forward to seeing the impact this has in our communities.”
These federal funds have been essential to stabilizing City finances and funding the City’s response to the harms done by the global pandemic,” said Amelia Cruver, City of Minneapolis Budget Director. “We have created a multi-year plan for replacing lost revenue that brought back over 50 jobs to the City that were lost to budget cuts in 2020 and has done so in a planful way that avoids sharp changes in property taxes for residents. Today, the City Council finalized our plans for investing American Rescue Plan Act dollars to support critical housing, public safety, and economic development projects. This would not be possible without the hard work and expertise from my colleagues in Finance and City staff in the departments implementing these impactful programs.”
