Here are seven key takeaways from our reporting:
1. Background: The Dayton Daily News project Billions in COVID aid: Where it’s going, has won awards for keeping local governments accountable and informing taxpayers about where COVID relief funds are going.
2. The latest: The city of Dayton awarded more than half a million dollars in COVID relief funds to community projects and business startups or expansions that fell short of promised results, according to records obtained by the Dayton Daily News. Read the story from Cornelius Frolik here.
3. Largest expense: A $200,000 grant to Ace Healthy Products for a mobile vaccine clinic was the largest grant to a for-profit business from $7.6 million the city allocated in American Rescue Plan funds to support minority-owned businesses. The city canceled the award for lack of performance.
4. Chicken Head’s: Chef Anthony Head told me in 2022 when he was awarded $178,100 from the city that his restaurant on North Main Street would open in months. Head has since opened and closed a restaurant in Kettering, with little visible progress on the Dayton site. The city now wants some of its money back.
5. Zooming out: The combined value of these grants — about $553,000 — account for a small share of the $138 million Dayton received in ARPA funds, which the city is using to fund a large number and wide variety of investments and projects.
6. County projects: Other recent Dayton Daily News reporting examined how Montgomery County is spending $103.3 million in ARPA funds, and how Miami County spent more than $20 million.
7. From the archives: Previous Dayton Daily News reporting looked into what obstacles Dayton faces in making the $138 million it received in ARPA funds truly transformative, and whether local governments were taking public opinion into account in deciding how the money should be spent. What do you think? Has all this money been “transformative,” as local officials predicted?
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