Pitches Made to Wheeling Council for Remaining ARPA Funds
Eric Ayres Trending
WHEELING -- Members of the Finance Committee of Wheeling City Council on Tuesday night heard what may be the final two pitches for American Rescue Plan Act funding.
Bishop Darrell Cummings of the Bethlehem Apostolic Temple and Wheeling Homeless Liaison Melissa Adams -- representing The Life Hub -- both appeared before the committee prior to Tuesday night's regular Wheeling City Council meeting to provide an outline of their plans to use the federal pandemic relief money and to answer questions from council members.
Both entities have requested $100,000 in ARPA funds. Cummings said that if approved, the money would be used to help them move forward with plans to establish a new daycare center inside the North Wheeling Community Dream Center.
Adams said the money would be spent on a number of uses for The Life Hub -- including expenses for designs, winter operations, grant writing, consultant fees, technology and marketing, education and outreach materials.
Officials said the city has enough money left in its ARPA fund to allocate both of these projects. City council is expected to consider both requests next month. Both have been recommended by the Finance Committee for consideration by the full city council.
If both are approved, the city would be left with about $20,000 in its pool of ARPA money, which had been around $29.5 million before city leaders distributed it. According to guidelines set forth by the U.S. Department of Treasury, the ARPA funds must be allocated by the end of 2024, and the projects they fund must be completed by the end of 2026.
City leaders noted that the request for ARPA money for the Temple Child Care Centre was submitted several months ago and was part of the pool of requests from local nonprofits that was originally reviewed by the Community Foundation. However, a technical issue resulted in this request being transferred back to city council for consideration.
"For whatever reason, that hasn't happened until now, and I apologize if I'm the problem for that, but it wasn't intentional," Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott told Cummings. "I think this is something that we identified early on - child care - as a priority. We make a big investment in King's Daughters, we're doing a project on Market Plaza to help with a major improvement. This fits in very well with that."
Cummings noted that the North Wheeling Dream Center sustained significant damage three years ago after portions of the sprinkler system burst and flooded much of the building. Since then, they have fixed the sprinkler system, put in a new sprinkler alarm, invested in new heating systems and paid for the cleanup from the flooding. These efforts cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in total, but they are paid for and completed, and the effort to take the next step toward establishing the daycare center is moving forward.
"It's our understanding that there is no child care center in North Wheeling. All of them are on other sides of the city. Those who have kids in North Wheeling have to go to another side of the city or go outside of the city to secure child care."
One of the reasons the 35,000-square-foot building at 407 Main St. was purchased was specifically to establish a new care center there. Plans call for the child care center to be created on the first floor of the facility.
In downtown Wheeling, The Life Hub is operating out of its new facility at 35-16th St., the former First English Lutheran Church. Adams said The Life Hub is up and running, working with individuals in the local homeless community, providing assistance and helping to place them into housing.
Next month, The Life Hub will open the annual winter shelter at the new location for the first time. The long-term goal of The Life Hub is to provide centralized, coordinated support services for the homeless community and open a low-barrier shelter that can operate year-round.
Adams told members of the Finance Committee that, if approved, the ARPA award would help move these plans forward and open the door to additional state and federal funding.
Of the requested $100,000, a $25,000 expenditure for architectural services would help get the ball rolling on design plans for a new shelter, which is expected to be constructed adjacent to the church building in the parking lot. Another $21,000 would go toward operating this year's winter freeze, which recently had been short on sufficient funding to be able to offer around 50 beds in a fully staffed setting from Dec. 15 to March 15. However, Life Hub officials expressed confidence that additional funding could be secured, and the winter shelter could open a week earlier and stay open past mid-March on a limited basis.
In order to become fully operational year-round, The Life Hub's would need a significant amount of funding from various sources.
"To get the facility up and going, that would be a lot of state and federal dollars," Adams said, noting that grants, donations from private foundations and other funding sources would help operate The Life Hub each year. "Depending on if we are able to get the money to start, I believe it would be somewhere between two to three years for completion."
A majority of members of city council faced some criticism from what is believed by many to be a vocal minority and took action to ban camping in the city beginning Jan. 1, allowing for a managed camp for homeless individuals that has rules. The free-for-all approach to allow homeless individuals to camp on public property across town has not been working, city leaders agreed, with many city leaders stressing that the "status quo" cannot continue with the city's homeless dilemma.
"Someone asked me the other day 'what's the difference between The Life Hub and the status quo,'" the mayor said. "The way I would explain it is - it's a housing-first strategy. We have a lot of different organizations that are trying to help people. But if you're living outside, it's very hard to focus on any aspect of your life and make the improvements necessary if you're just basically focusing on survival, which it is.
"The idea here is to get people into housing first, recognizing that many are going to come in with problems."
Once sheltered in this pipeline, those in need of help will be able to get the help they need in one location - The Life Hub, officials said.
"I do appreciate you bringing this to us," Councilman Dave Palmer told Adams. "I must say this is probably the most scrutinized $100,000 we'd ever spend, but I think that we're all trying to figure out how we'd all tie everything in. It's something we've struggled with, because we don't have all the answers."
A resolution to award the money to The Life Hub received a first reading during Tuesday night's council meeting and is expected to come up for a final vote in two weeks.
City Manager Robert Herron said the city administration has met with officials from Catholic Charities, but no specific location for a managed homeless encampment has been determined so far.
"We have begun the process of developing the rules and regulations -- we went through a first draft of that today," Herron said. "There are guidelines on how you set up a camp, the square footage and how to allow the tents to be constructed in that camp."