ARPA Wrapped (well, sort of) with Bill Shaner

Part 9/9 from our series: ARPA Funding in Worcester

We are back this week with the final episode of our ARPA Funding in Worcester series. Our guest this is episode is Bill Shaner founder of the “Worcester Sucks and I Love It” newsletter and a previous guest on the show. Josh and Bill talk about how we can continue to stay involved in the conversation surrounding how the remaining ARPA dollars will be spent in Worcester and how we can hold the city accountable so that the funding is sustainable and promoting equity within our community. 

Check out the “Worcester Sucks and I Love it” newsletter on their website! 

Learn more about how Worcester plans to spend ARPA dollars on the City website.

Public Hearing is a podcast from Action! by Design about our home city of Worcester, Massachusetts and the people we should be listening to—residents, artists, activists, community leaders, storytellers, and those most impacted by issues facing our city. Our mission is to cultivate community through equity, inclusion, and design, and that work starts at home.

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Transcript for this episode

Joshua Croke (00:03):

Hello Worcester in the world, you are listening to Public Hearing on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station or wherever you get your podcast. I am your host, Joshua Croke. I'm the founder of Action! by Design, we're an equity-centered community development agency that works with people to realize equitable just and joy-filled futures through art and design. Public Hearing is our show about making public participation and civic engagement, more accessible in Worcester, our home base and sharing stories from people in our community doing work that resonates with our commitment of engaging people with purpose. This is the Public Hearing podcast. We are wrapping up our series today on ARPA the American Rescue Plan Act funding that is bringing 146 million to Worcester to address the impacts of the pandemic in our communities. We will certainly be coming back to this topic over the coming months, as this is such a critical focal point right now in our community.

Joshua Croke (00:56):

These funds are truly transformative. At least they should be. For listeners who might be just tuning in these dollars are earmarked for projects that support those disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, which are low-income communities and communities of color. To chat about this today, we have Bill Shaner back on the show from Worcester Sucks and I Love it and the Worcester's Good, but Hurts podcast. Thanks for being here, Bill, so we chatted at the beginning of the year and a lot of, you know, continued chaos ensued through these, you know, these many months, right? ARPA is maybe not as much of a point of conversation as it should be at people's dinner tables. But this is a lot of money, right, that's coming into the city and we've had conversations with a lot of folks in our community who are looking at this from different perspectives really in the different areas in which people are working in which this money could be allocated for mental health, food, security, housing, et cetera, like addressing these issues connected to the pandemic.

Joshua Croke (02:01):

One of the things that I've found challenging is as well as like a common thread through all of this is a lack of community awareness and understanding around how to actually like, get information about what's going on with ARPA, right? The city launched a dashboard, a financial dashboard, which I'm looking at as we're talking, which, you know, I, as someone with a background and user experience and user interface design, I'm like, there's a lot of work that could be done here, but it's also probably better than a handful of things the city's provided in the past, but also is still relatively obscure. So maybe we can start there from like your experience as a reporter in the city maybe talk a little bit about the difficulty or if it is difficult of finding access to information and data to report on what the city's doing. Cuz I have found that I spend most of my time trying to track this information right than actually diving into the data.

Bill Shaner (02:59):

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, it's not something that's unique to Worcester though. I think Worcester could be doing a much better job than it is, but I mean my career as a reporter, I've worked in, you know, a bunch of different municipal governments and you know, all of them are pretty much the same in that, you know, there's a, there's kind of an attitude of like, oh, well it's not my job to make sure the public knows about this. You know, it's not my job to make sure that this is like something that can be easily found and digested. And I also think that there's sort of a current that runs through like the culture of your city hall, especially management. That's like, eh, you know, we say we want public engagement, but you know, in like little increments, you know, we don't want too much of it, you know.

Joshua Croke (03:51):

Right, Exactly. I actually asked the other day, I was like, what is the city's like, what's the public budget for community engagement and they're like, it doesn't exist.

Bill Shaner (04:00):

Yeah, right. They were like, what do you mean social media? Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Right.

Joshua Croke (04:03):

It's like, wait, you don't actually have a funding mechanism to engage the community.

Bill Shaner (04:08):

Yeah. Right. And I mean in a different media economy where there are more reporters and there's a more robust sort of fourth estate for all the problems that go into that term. I mean like like the press could be doing more to get the public involved in this stuff sort of dry and wonky on the surface as it is. I think that's it’s the job that the press should be doing that we're not doing, it's like kind of the thing I'm trying to really address in the newsletter with sort of like the you know, the chains taken off of what's expected of your your standard, you know, municipal government reporter. But I mean, I am good at this stuff, sorry, I don't know if I can

Joshua Croke (04:59):

Oh, we might have to.

Bill Shaner (05:01):

Yeah, sorry I'll keep it in mind, but I'm good at this stuff. And I have a hard time it's not really a system designed to facilitate a big public discussion. It's just designed to let the counselors know what's going on. And the counselors don't even like really read the stuff that the city hall gives them a lot of the time. But there are all these reports and stuff are technically there it just takes a working knowledge of how government works that if you're not like a weird, like little freak, like me, that that is objectively hard to get into. And the barriers for even understanding, let alone caring, are massive. And I just, I wanna thank you for asking me to do this because I had completely forgotten about ARPA since like maybe the winter, right? Like it seems like we got the plan from city hall and how they plan to spend the money. And then it's just been little drips and drabs of things since then. And I mean, I went through and I got some notes on what those drips and drabs have been, but it's like, okay, we told you how we're gonna spend it. We made a couple committees to oversee the spending, but almost all of this money isn't spent yet. I mean, they haven't really decided

Joshua Croke (06:19):

Literally 13 million has been spent and almost all of that has been on internal municipal support.

Bill Shaner (06:27):

Right, exactly. Yeah, 13 million, 9.4 went to revenue recovery, which I mean, we can get into this, but I don't think that the spirit of what ARPA is, has anything to do with recovering parking receipts from the DCU center, right. Like that's something that they're technically allowed to do with the money, but there's a huge difference between what you should do with this money and what you're allowed to do with it, you know. And Worcester I think the biggest and most fair criticism of Worcester's plan to spend this money is they touch on literally everything that you're allowed to do with it. Whereas the public messaging is on the things that they should be doing which is what they call just generally like community needs or community projects, whatever bureaucratic term they use for that. And that's only as it stands right now, the proposal is only 52 million of the 146 is going towards that. I mean,

Joshua Croke (07:26):

And like 40 of that is earmarked already for that's what they, I think are considering their housing bucket.

Bill Shaner (07:33):

Right, the housing bucket is 30 million right now. But yeah, so like, sort of within that 52 million is the things that are the things that like would generally meet the spirit of what ARPA should be doing for the community and like there's problems within that too. But like, that's way more justifiable of an expense than like, you know, technology, upgrades and infrastructure and stuff that you really should be figuring out with your budget. You know, the money you already have, the money you get every year and the money you spend every year, like that's like what city hall does. So in that way it’s disappointing, but it's not for nothing that, you know, there's $15 million going towards the affordable housing trust fund. And that there's gonna be affordable housing trust fund board of trustees that is like a decent group of people. I'm a little bitter cuz I applied for it and didn't it on it. But all of, I think all the people on that are good. And that's like a good mechanism to create more affordable housing, which we desperately need in this city. And it just, would've been nice if the whole pot went towards these things,

Joshua Croke (08:52):

You know, and that exactly. And that is something that I've challenged from the beginning of this is like how the community was actually engaged in setting these priorities. And does this funding, do these funding allocations even align with what the community has been saying, right. The community, the city did an end-of-year survey that I think, you know, again, it was like a hundred plus people, you know, responded to. And it's like, great, there's some data, but in a city of 200,000 people, 174 respondents to a survey, isn't giving you a lot of accurate information as to what the community is really asking for what really needs prioritized.

Bill Shaner (09:30):

Right, and there's been no like real substantive effort to think about it creatively and to see what other communities are doing and to really think consciously about, you know, how do we spend this money in the way that it best reflects the spirit in which it was given which is, you know, the people most impacted by the pandemic. It goes towards programs and in, you know, public infrastructure and assistance for those people. Revenue recovery for the DCU center, which is like basically, the only thing that's been spent so far probably because it's the easiest to spend no one cares about that right at all and that doesn't help anybody. Right.

Joshua Croke (10:18):

And for listeners, the city has to like allocate this money by the end of 2024 to everything and then spend it by 2026

Bill Shaner (10:27):

I believe so. I believe so. Yeah.

Joshua Croke (10:29):

And, so there's the question of, okay, the city's initial intent to be perceived as leading with equity in this is to, okay, we're gonna create these ad hoc committees. Right. And now people have been assigned to these ad hoc committees and there was decent community advocacy from a few folks. We had Gina Plata-Nino on the show earlier and Casey Burns from the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester. Literally had like supported people by saying like, call us if you need help on the application, we will help make this process as easy as possible for folks where there's already a barrier for folks to feel enabled, to kind of apply for this right. Right. Applications for these ad hoc committees was not very vast and broad. So the people selected were out of the small pool of people that applied which again, like you're going through this, like the filter of yeah.

Bill Shaner (11:19):

Right.

Joshua Croke (11:19):

The city process to get the few folks, you know, involved. And the, I guess the real question that I have here is like, how are those people being set up for success? What resources are they being provided and supported in fulfilling the obligations or the duties of these positions?

Bill Shaner (11:36):

Right. And well, I think that it's important to understand that these ad hoc committees based of community people that the city manager personally appoints by the way take that for what it is is they are not really responsible for generating proposals for how this is spent. That's not something that they, you might even have a law department trying to make a judgment, if it ever came to that, that like, no, these have to come from city hall has to generate them, you know, and then you can just vote up or down on it. So that's, you know, like it is good that we have community members involved in the dispensing of these funds, but it’s a limited capcity. I mean, all at the end of the day, all of the funding proposals are going to come from city hall or through, from somewhere else through city hall, like with the Regional Food Hub and Discover Central Massachusetts, which is just the chamber of commerce, getting money from the city pretty much. <Laugh> well,

Joshua Croke (12:48):

And, and you raise a great point there and like, and I'm not making a statement of whether or not the Food Hub deserves funding. Yeah,

Bill Shaner (12:56):

No, I would say it does. Yeah.

Joshua Croke (12:58):

But the fact that without any community input, the city just says, we're giving this a million dollars. Yeah. As opposed to other things that are going on in the community does, you know, really look suspicious in like who's actually being supported and enabled to be successful through this process and who is not right.

Bill Shaner (13:18):

And that's, you know, that's the story of Worcester city hall, any city hall for all time is there is there's an insider culture. You know, I'm a part of it. I'm in the Worcester inner circle

Joshua Croke (13:31):

That's right. We haven't spoken since your inner circle article

Bill Shaner (13:34):

I know I'm in the Worcester inner circle. And, you know, I was up in the gated community up off of what's it called Salisbury street, you know, with the cameras and the pretty street signs. And I was landscaping. But I got there. I was there. I was in, I was in for a second. Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm not anywhere close to being in what anyone could conceivably called the inner circle of Worcester, but you know, who is Tim Murray and, you know, who got the first ARPA allocations is Tim Murray you know, like and that's just politics baby, you know, like it's an unfortunate reality. And that reality bleeds through this entire thing. I mean, the infrastructure around the claim that this is an equity led process are these ad hoc committees.

Bill Shaner (14:33):

And those will have some modicum of say over how a third of this money gets spent. You know, the community programs, the community initiatives is 52 million out of 146. That's a third of the money. The other two-thirds are being spent as if this is just new you know tax revenue to incorporate into projects that city hall has just had on the back burner, you know, and that's, you know, that's disappointing. I think that there's more creative, more aggressive, more progressive ways of spending this money that would make a bigger impact on the residents who were the most disenfranchised and put out by the pandemic. And, you know, I would beg anybody in city hall to make the, you know, moral argument that enterprise resource planning system benefits, you know, somebody living on Grafton Hill that can't afford their apartment anymore. And, you know, got put out by the pandemic and is, you know, facing sort of an impossible situation of staying in this city. Like I don't see how that is in the spirit of what these funds should be for it's, you know, it's technically legal you know, and like, that's just a great, you love to hear people make that case. Well, you know, it's legal for us to spend the money this way. It's like, oh okay sure.

Joshua Croke (16:12):

Exactly it's just so frequently, like, no, we can do this, but it's like, should you though, like, is this how you should be doing this?

Bill Shaner (16:19):

Yeah. Before I came on, I was listening to the episode you did with Eric Batista. And that is probably the best information we have so far on how the city really plans on, you know, spending this money. And he said often is like, yeah, well, we're allowed to do this. We're allowed to do that. You know? And it's like, okay, just because like this money that came with a million carve-outs and caveats and all the wonkery of the federal government doesn't mean that you're like honor bound to hit all of the caveats. You know, you should like, we could have made a conscious choice that literally all of this money goes to affordable housing.

Joshua Croke (17:00):

And I am also still salty that Ed Augustus stood us up that morning.

Bill Shaner (17:04):

Oh yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Joshua Croke (17:05):

Yeah. And the main reason being, you know, for listeners is like, it wasn't just, you know, Ed Augustus not informing us, that he wasn't attending an interview that he said he was gonna be attending and Eric Batista informing us two minutes before we started recording that he wasn't coming. It's the fact that there is always this, well, this was done before me argument. Right. And Ed set these budget priorities and now Eric stepping in as city manager simply gets to say and fall back on, well, this was inherited. And so now I'm kind of stewarding this process. And the other challenging piece for me there was, you know, when asking about these ad hoc committees and that the power that they should hold, you know, at the end of the day, Eric's like, yeah, I still get to make the decision. These are just, you know, people that are serving and informing me about recommendations, but I can or cannot take them. Right.

Bill Shaner (17:57):

Right. Exactly.

Joshua Croke (17:58):

Yeah. What real power and authority are we giving these people to hold our, you know, administration accountable?

Bill Shaner (18:04):

And that's a frustrating like reality to put next to the sort of complaints from city hall. Like, oh, we have all these vacancies on these committees. How come no one ever wants to be on these committees? And it's like, oh yeah, like spend a year on it and see you're just wasting your time. You know, it's like, I mean, there's just, it's a problem in the structure of the city charter, it's a problem in the structure of city hall that like there's no real authority there. There's just like a recommendation, you know? And so it's a tenuous claim then to say that it's an equity led process based on the creation of these ad hoc committees, if these ad hoc committees only exist in an advisory role that they're basically giving a yay or a nay to policies that the city hall creates or funding proposals that city hall creates, and then the city hall authorizes.

Bill Shaner (19:09):

And, you know, it's been funny, like there's been a couple things that have come out sort of quietly way under the radar that are relative to ARPA, but they're not getting talked about holistically, like May 24th, like, I don't think they even talked about it. The city council approved, I don't even know if they legally have to approve it at this point. You know, that's another confusing thing in our style of government, but they like a back pay for first responders under the employment of city hall. And that's how 2.5 million of a is getting spent. And you know, that's cops, like, that's just cops, you know, it's not awful. The proposal is like $3,000 for people that make less than 60,000 and 1,500 for people who make more than 60,000.

Bill Shaner (20:05):

And if you make, I think if you make $150,000 or more then you get 500 or you get nothing rather, you get nothing. If you make more than a hundred yeah. 150% of the state average annual wage, which is a $109,000. So if you make like 160 or more, you get nothing, but, you know, does that include retail work? I don't know. Doesn't say, doesn't say so yeah. So that went through with, like, I don't think it even got written about, you know, and that was just like, yep. Okay, cool back pay for all the city hall workers. And it just, wasn't really earnestly discussed in any way

Joshua Croke (20:46):

Right, and when we're thinking about, again, like people who are most disproportionately impacted of like low income communities and communities of color, like we're dealing with folks who are making $20,000 a year, if that, in the community. And it's like, no, let's prioritize like, you know, people making 60 plus here work for the city. And it's like, again, not saying that people in our communities aren't like deserving of some support for what they went through this pandemic. And where is this money being spent on the everyday needs of people. Right. That have significant need, like people who are at the end of this month going to be displaced because they can't afford rent, you know?

Bill Shaner (21:26):

Yeah. Right. I mean, like going on, like the line of logic that like we're allowed to spend this money this way, you were allowed to do 146 divided by 200, you know, just do 146 million divided by 200,000 and give the money away. And that would've been immensely popular. It's the first time in many people's lives that they would see city hall has having done anything at all for them. And it would've like done a lot more to honor the spirit of this money than the way that the majority of it is being spent. And, you know, like, but what we're going to have is sort of like a messaging campaign that this is an equity led initiative. And, you know, there's just a certain type of person that just loves to hear that word. And as soon as they hear that word, it's good and, you know.

Joshua Croke (22:21):

Trusted, no, and I get into this argument or conversation all the time around like, understanding what equity is versus like understanding equity as process versus outcome. And that's something that our city at large, I think is a no concept of what equity first solutions and practices actually look like. Yeah. and so like that’s a huge issue and we are already like rapidly approaching the end of our time. What, things what else do you have that you want to bring to this space?

Bill Shaner (22:54):

Yeah, so I'll say that, you know, this isn't over yet. It's not done. There's still a lot of work to be done in holding the city to accountable, to spending the money the way that they say, you know, it's so entirely possible that everyone just forgets about ARPA and the plan changes and, you know, oh, we got this pressing need and, oh, we can't cover our Polar Park loan payment and, you know, we gotta use some ARPA money, move some money around so we can, you know, pay the construction crews back for building this ballpark. But, you know, so like we gotta like keep 'em honest basically is what I would say. And I mean, the battle over the general shape of how this money is going to be spent, I think is sort of that ship is sailed.

Bill Shaner (23:45):

This is what's going to happen. But I think that even though the quote unquote community is only getting a third of this money, it's still a lot of money. And we still gotta make sure that this money goes to helping people that this 15 million in the affordable housing trust fund, doesn't just sit there, collecting interest, right. That we spend money on infrastructure to help our most disenfranchised people, our unhoused, like get a meaningful housing first program going, you know, like when I say meaningful, I mean like the, you asked city hall how they handle the unhoused, like what, what their strategies for that. And they'll just spit a million, you know, wonky things at you. But at the end of the day, it's just shuffling them around the city while offering alternatives that are not good enough, right.

Bill Shaner (24:41):

That are not suitable. And then the cops just have the the busy work of just, you know, throwing away all the stuff at one camp so that another can pop up on the other side of the city in the next week. And, you know, if we threw more money at a housing first, rapid rehousing sort of deal for this, then we would be adequately addressing the problem in a way that feels like it's just politically untenable right now. And that's, you know, budgets are moral documents. We love to say that it's always worth pointing out in the budget for ARPA has 4 million of 146 million going to housing first solutions for the unhoused. And that kind of says like, all you need to say about it, honestly, it's like, you can talk about equity, all you want. And it might be marketing that works for people who don't want to think about it in earnest, but I don't think that what we're seeing right here is necessarily reflective of what equitable spending would look like. If it were really true to the spirit of the word and the spirit of how ARPA was given to cities and towns across the country, you know?

Joshua Croke (26:04):

Yeah. And unfortunately, I completely agree. And for listeners, I think again, the advocacy time period is not spent, like there is, again, I agree with you that the money overall has been earmarked and that's how it's going to be spent if it's not rerouted and, you know repositioned, but there is the, and some of the equity first folks in the community that I've been talking with are looking at all right there's 10 million earmarked for other community-based initiatives, which I think might be where we have the most power to influence what that money goes to and I really hope it is equity first solutions.

Bill Shaner (26:47):

Yes. Yeah. I mean, that is I was gonna talk about that there is 10 million of this that's still unallocated, or there's no plan for it. And I think that, you know, through some of our city counselors that are amenable to these things, it would behoove us to start putting ideas on the table for that, so that it doesn't get sucked up by, you know, Tim Murray <laugh> cause he's waiting, he's waiting in the wings, you know, he he's looking at that. How can I get that money? You know? So yeah, that's what I would say. I think that would honestly be the most productive way to frame the conversation is there's 10 million of this that still hasn't been spent. How can we spend this in the best way possible?

Joshua Croke (27:23):

Well, our time has flown. Yes. Thank you, Bill for coming on the show. You're listening to Public Hearing we've been talking with Bill Shaner from Worcester Sucks and I Love it. Our podcast and radio show Public Hearing airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station and can be heard wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm your host. Joshua Croke. Our audio producer is Giuliano D’Orazio, who also made our show music. Thank you to Molly Gammon and Kellee Kosiorek, who also support the production of the show. Get even more connected to us @publichearing.co. The work continues Worcester. Thanks for listening.