Priorities

One of the “highlights” of the county executive on his countywide budget tour is how the allocation of ARPA funds are helping the municipalities of Erie county fund infrastructure projects that they otherwise couldn’t fund. Although there are other allocations of ARPA money, let’s compare the municipal funds with what was given to Gannon University for Project NepTWNE ($1.5 million), since the municipalities are where the county executive purports to prioritize. The source is here: Erie County, Pa. has spent roughly $41 million in ARPA funds. Where did the funds go?

American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds were designed to help the country recover from the effects of the pandemic. For more information on how ARPA grants were to be distributed and the qualifications: State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. Project NepTWNE was granted $1.5 million in ARPA funds to build a water research lab in the Union Fish Building as the ordinance was written: https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/faqs/#erie-county-documents-regarding-the-1-5-million-grant-to-gannon. Keep in mind these funds were granted to a private, religious university with a large endowment. Gannon still had remote classes during the pandemic: Gannon to pay $1.1 million to settle class-action suit over COVID-era remote instruction.

As is shown in the comparison, each of these municipalities received a fraction of what was given to Gannon, which at the end of the 2022 school year had an endowment of $71 million. If, as the county executive contends, these municipalities are so desperate for money for basic services, then why was one of the largest chunks of it given to an entity that wasn’t so desperate? And then Gannon got a lease of the taxpayer funded library on top of it? You might also want to check the article for public safety grants and how those were prioritized considering the country executive has ideas about the county 911 system.

“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.”

~Rick Riordan