Are you sick of talking about COVID? Pun intended. Well this isn’t really about COVID, it’s about $883k given to the city of Shorewood to protect the citizens of Shorewood and it mostly all went down the drain. Literally!
THE PURPOSE. Various COVID fund sources were categorized under the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) for the purpose of “urgent public health needs and economic impacts”. The Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) was designated to fund K-12 schools and higher education institutions for student aid and operational costs. State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) was designated to provide flexible funding to states and cities to address pandemic impacts.
According to several sources, Shorewood used the vast majority of $883k to replace a water pump at the Covington location and other various water projects. Another source stated, “The city did buy iPads and who knows what else. It was such a free-for-all spend! We got hundreds of lens wipes meant for microscopes. Thousands of gloves of every size and liquid hand sanitizer that they didn’t even have the right containers for.” None of these items were ever distributed to protect the residents of Shorewood or help with our education programs.
The CARES ACT was written loosely, so states and cities could determine without encumbrance how to best use the funds. Water infrastructure is absolutely important to the health of the people, but people also needed other protection, like PPE masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, COVID tests, and services that the city could have provided. The people that made these decisions no longer work for the city. However, the Mayor and several city council members had the opportunity to oversee how to utilize these funds. Let’s hope they care more about residents in the future.
