Rather than closing out a deliberate and transparent recovery effort, the City’s final ARPA expenditures reinforce a pattern evident since 2021—fragmented decision-making, weak internal controls, and little evidence that spending was aligned with direct, accountable community outcomes. Compounding the problem, the City never developed a coherent recovery plan. As the December 31, 2024, obligation deadline approached, 2024 devolved into a rushed effort to obligate funds and execute contracts. Predictably, haste produced errors.

Several 2025 expenditures appear not to have been timely, legally, obligated at all. That, however, did not stop the City from cutting checks.

For example:

• On February 25, 2025, the City issued a check for $75,885 to Don Brown Bus Sales, Inc., but there is no indication in the file showing that this money was obligated prior to December 31, 2024.
• On February 25, 2025, the City issued a check for $112.,943.36 to MES Service Company LLC to purchase equipment for the fire department. However, while the legislation authorizing the purchase occurred in 2024, the City did not obligate itself to make the purchase until 2025.

The year also saw nearly $1 million spent on building repairs for facilities that remain leaky and dilapidated; additional vehicle purchases; more software—some involving recurring costs the City neither planned for nor can afford; and yet another gift card program. A snapshot of the City’s 2025 ARPA spending appears below.

I. The City’s Own Blueprint—and Its Failure to Follow It

In 2024, the City unveiled the “Mount Vernon First: Small Business Grant” program as its flagship ARPA-based recovery initiative. On paper, it was robust:

• Clear eligibility criteria
• Defined geographic focus (Downtown Business District)
• A competitive application window
• A 120-point scoring rubric and individual evaluator scorecards
• Interviews and rankings
• Restricted uses of funds
• Monitoring, site visits, and documentation requirements

The City represented to the public—and to the federal government—that ARPA funds would be deployed through a structured, merit-based, documented process designed to spur recovery and revitalization.

The records tell a different story.

II. What the Files Actually Contain—and What They Do Not

Across the ARPA grants disbursed in late 2024 and throughout 2025, the City’s files fairly consistently include executed contracts, claim vouchers, and issued checks. But they just as consistently do not include:

• Proof that funded projects occurred
• Receipts or invoices tied to eligible uses
• Photographs of completed work, site visit reports, or completion certifications
• Monitoring or compliance memoranda
• Outcome or impact summaries

In short, the files show authorization and payment, but not performance or results.

That is not a clerical oversight. Under ARPA, the obligation to ensure compliance does not end when a check is cut. It begins there.

III. The Small Business Grants: Recovery in Name Only

ARPA’s small business grants were typically capped at $25,000 and often paid in two installments—sometimes months after the contract period had ended. While the City justified these grants as relief for “negative economic impacts of COVID-19,” the underlying uses frequently included: rent arrears, utilities, payroll, marketing, inventory, equipment, vehicle purchases, and general operating expenses.

Many of these uses stretch, if not exceed, the program’s own stated purposes, which emphasized façade improvements, build-outs, exterior work, and code compliance tied to downtown revitalization. More importantly, the files do not demonstrate that the funded activities actually occurred, let alone that they addressed pandemic-related harm.

IV. What If You Knew: A Case Study in Process Breakdown

One grant illustrates the systemic failures especially clearly.

The business What If You Knew received a $25,000 ARPA small business grant, justified as pandemic recovery assistance. The contract—executed only by the recipient—contained a clearly computer-generated signature, without an accompanying audit trail or signature certificate. While electronic signatures are legally permissible, the absence of authentication metadata in a federally funded contract weakens the integrity of the record.

More troubling is what is missing:

• No lease documentation
• No renovation or build-out receipts
• No permits
• No proof of expansion
• No expenditure report—despite the contract explicitly requiring one
• No monitoring or follow-up

The proposed use of funds—marketing, staffing, and contingency planning—also diverged from the core design of the Mount Vernon First program, which prioritized physical improvements and downtown storefront activation. In any event, there is no trace of a business operating under the name What If You Knew in downtown Mount Vernon. While the New York State Department of State lists the entity as “active,” its address remains the single-family home listed in the contract.

Whether this grant was well-intentioned is beside the point. The City cannot demonstrate that it complied with its own rules or with ARPA’s accountability requirements.

V. The Illusion of Oversight

The City produced scorecards, rubrics, FAQs, and selection packets that suggest rigor and discipline. But these materials largely exist in isolation, detached from the grant files themselves.

For many recipients:

• Scorecards are missing
• Rankings are undocumented
• Interview notes are absent
• Final selection rationales are unclear

Compounding these deficiencies, the review team consisted of the Mayor’s Deputy Chief of Staff and the Comptroller’s Assistant Comptroller—the same Assistant Comptroller whose father benefitted from ARPA funds when the City spent $72,000 to demolish his long-neglected property.

Once again, the City appeared unconcerned with substantive review or even the appearance of impropriety. What resulted was the appearance of oversight, not its substance.

VI. The Gift Cards That Couldn’t Be Used

The lack of follow-through and verification in Mount Vernon’s ARPA spending is not limited to small business grants. It also appears in resident-facing public safety initiatives, including programs involving cash-equivalent gift cards—one of the highest-risk forms of public expenditure.

In late 2024, the City used $61,835 in ARPA funds to purchase 400 prepaid Visa gift cards, each valued at $150, plus associated fees, for a program labeled the “Neighborhood Camera Program.” The purchase was processed through Commerce Bank and paid directly by the City. The authorizing ordinance describes a structured program: residents would receive gift cards to purchase security cameras, eligibility would be based on neighborhood need and crime data, and participants would agree to provide camera footage to the Mount Vernon Police Department if requested.

However, as with other ARPA programs, what the City’s files do not contain is equally important. There is no documentation showing:

• how recipients were selected,
• who received the cards,
• when or how the cards were activated,
• whether the cards were successfully redeemed, or
• whether cameras were ever purchased or installed.

Nor do the files include serial-number logs, distribution acknowledgements, redemption confirmations, or post-program reports—controls that are standard when public funds are converted into gift cards.

This absence of documentation is especially troubling in light of community reports that residents who attempted to redeem gift cards from a separate, earlier City-run gun buyback program found that the cards had no funds available when presented for use. According to residents, the cards were distributed, but the money “never went on the cards.”

Each gift card program involved different vendors, amounts, and inventories. What remained constant was City coordination—and a near-total failure of internal controls. Time and again, ARPA funds were used to purchase gift cards with no records demonstrating activation, distribution, or successful use.

Gift cards are not inherently improper. But they are inherently high-risk, precisely because once funds leave the City in that form, they are difficult to trace without strict controls. The City’s ARPA files show the money being spent—but not the programs being executed.

VII. The Final Accounting: Less Than Recovery, More Than Risk

By the end of 2025, Mount Vernon had expended or obligated virtually all of its $41,108,657 ARPA allocation. And yet:

• Less than 5% went to direct assistance for residents
• Community-facing programs lack proof of delivery
• Small business grants lack proof of performance
• The City absorbed long-term costs it cannot sustain
• The public was left without a transparent accounting

ARPA was meant to stabilize households, strengthen systems, and reduce future fiscal stress. In Mount Vernon, it did none of those things. Instead, it enriched City Hall.

VIII. Conclusion: Haphazard Spending Is Not Recovery

The ARPA era in Mount Vernon ends not with recovery, but with a reckoning.

The federal government entrusted Mount Vernon with more than $41 million in emergency relief—one-time funding meant to stabilize finances, protect residents, and prevent exactly the kind of fiscal collapse the City now faces. What residents received instead was a 5.47% property-tax increase, nearly non-existent services, unchecked crime, rampant homelessness, filthy streets, and so many fires that one resident publicly asked, “Is Mount Vernon Hell?”

Residents were never meaningfully prioritized. Developers dominated decision-making. And the City’s finances are weaker than before the money arrived.

This outcome was not inevitable. It was chosen.

City leadership failed to produce a comprehensive recovery strategy. They failed to adopt a disciplined plan to stabilize City finances or reduce long-term risk. They failed to create any framework that prioritized residents over vendors, insiders, or politically favored projects. They failed to impose guardrails to prevent one-time federal dollars from being used to create recurring costs the City could not sustain. Oversight was treated as optional. Documentation was treated as an inconvenience. Proof of results was treated as unnecessary.

And when the money ran out, the bill was handed to taxpayers.

Mount Vernon’s ARPA story is one of failed oversight at every level—local, state, and federal. It is a story of greed, corruption, and incompetence, of extraordinary public resources poured into a system that lacked the discipline, transparency, and integrity required to manage them. It is a story of misaligned incentives, where insiders benefited while residents paid more for less. It is the story of what happens when “free” money is given to people who think it is okay to give themselves 40% raises with back pay, buried in a contingency line and justified under an obscure provision of state law the public was never informed about. It is a story about the abject failure of the checks and balances on which our system of government relies.

In the end, a struggling city received a once-in-a-lifetime infusion of cash—roughly a quarter of its annual budget—and the people in charge still managed to drive it into bankruptcy. That is not bad luck. It is not misfortune. It is what happens when those entrusted with public money choose themselves over the people they were supposed to serve.

* * * *

This concludes The Sunday Series: ARPA in Mount Vernon.

Our next series, PILOTs, Politics, and the Public Cost, will examine the Mount Vernon Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and the unchecked expansion of developer-driven low-income housing, focusing on how these deals are structured, who benefits, and what they cost the public. That series, along with prior installments of ARPA in Mount Vernon, and other City-related material, is available at The Integrity Project’s website: https://mvcip.org/.

Instead, 2024 brought more of the same: lack of planning, random spending, fabricated emergencies, and more vehicles. One thing did change, however. For the first time, ARPA spending began to include items that appeared to be direct community support—“community development,” “small business grants,” program checks, and resident-facing initiatives. In most cities, this would have been a positive development.

But this is Mount Vernon.

And while Mount Vernon is good at spending other people’s money, ARPA wasn’t just about cutting checks. It required documentation, controls, procurement discipline, and, when third parties were paid to deliver services, real oversight. The City’s 2024 reporting shows money leaving City Hall, but records produced in response to our FOIL request do not show the basic follow-up needed to verify what was delivered, who received assistance, or whether funds were distributed fairly and lawfully.

In short, disbursement was not accompanied by oversight. To the extent funds actually left City Hall, the City appears to have stopped asking questions once the checks cleared.

Finally, while 2024 marked the year City officials seemed to remember that ARPA was supposed to offer direct assistance to residents, when we zoom out, we see that across the City’s $41,108,657 ARPA award, less than 5% went to direct relief for Mount Vernon residents.

I. Mayor’s Guaranteed Income Program

Guaranteed Income (“GI”) programs provide regular, no-strings-attached cash payments—often monthly stipends—to help individuals meet basic needs, reduce poverty, and build financial stability. These programs are typically temporary pilot initiatives, publicly or privately funded, and differ from traditional welfare programs in that funds may be spent without restrictions.

Between 2023 and 2024, the City spent $1 million in ARPA funds on the Mayor’s Guaranteed Income program, purchasing 2,000 $500 gift cards to be distributed monthly to 200 low-income individuals or families for one year. Eligibility was based on annual income limits.

Interestingly, the ordinance authorizing the program raised the approved amount to $1.65 million from $1.2 million. But the City’s receipts show purchases totaling only $1 million, while the City’s federal ARPA reports show expenditures of $1.2 million. No records were produced showing actual distribution to recipients.

Presumably, however, somewhere out there are 200 low-income individuals or families who received $500 per month for a year—$6,000 each.

II. The “Community Development” Catchall

The City spent more than $700,000 in ARPA funds under the broad category of “Community Development.” Some expenditures appear, on their face, to support worthwhile community efforts:

• 914Lock received $25,000 to purchase a transport van for food distribution and hot meals for vulnerable populations. The contract covered October 25, 2024, through December 31, 2024, and required weekly hot meal delivery to an average of 200 people per month. No documentation shows where or whether meals were delivered.
• Y-COP received $25,000 to purchase a 15-passenger van to transport program participants. The contract covered May 1, 2024, through May 30, 2025, but contained no substantive programmatic requirements, effectively functioning as a vehicle donation.
• Mercy University received $200,000 (of a $400,000 commitment) for administrative support and academic oversight of the City’s Financial Empowerment Center. The contract term runs from January 16, 2024, through January 16, 2026.

Beyond these, the record becomes increasingly problematic. A proliferation of small business grants—many purportedly for afterschool or community programs—lacks evidence that the programs ever occurred. With few exceptions, files contain no monitoring reports, attendance records, proof of service delivery, evaluations, or other documentation showing that funded activities took place.

In many cases, contract “scopes of work” are so vague that merely operating a business would satisfy the requirements. For example, Cluster Inc. received $20,000 to “provide services to the Mount Vernon community that will directory impact the youth and strength of the community.”

Even where scopes were more detailed, narratives often describe routine business expenses—such as payroll—rather than addressing a COVID-related impact. When receipts are included, they typically confirm only that someone was paid, not that services were delivered. On their face, many of these programs appear community-run and community-focused, but the documentation does not substantiate that appearance.

Several grants raise more serious concerns regarding conflicts of interest and oversight failures:

• Friends of Mount Vernon Arts, Recreation, and Youth Programs received $60,000. The charity is run by Comptroller Darren Morton and other City Hall employees. The contract term was June 1, 2024, through July 30, 2025, to fund youth sports programming. No documentation shows that services were delivered. Most troubling, the disbursement checks were co-signed by Comptroller Morton himself.
• Westchester Latinos Unidos received $30,000. The organization is run by Elvira Castillo, a 2024 City Council candidate who ran on the Mayor and developer supported RiseUp Mount Vernon slate. Funds were to support four ESL classes and four citizenship classes. No documentation shows that these services occurred.
• Friendship for Tots received $20,000 to fund instructors providing wraparound services for children ages 2 to 6. The contract ran from March 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. While the file contains payroll summaries, there is no evidence that contracted services were delivered.
• The Revelators, a Yonkers-based arts program, received $20,000 for a two-day run of The Story at the Doles Center on November 16–17, 2024. The organization lists an “office” at an apartment complex in Mount Vernon. No documentation shows that performances occurred. Receipts show a bizarre array of charged expenses including $500 to “clean and sanitize” a car, nearly $3,000 for car repairs, children’s clothing, gluten-free chewable enzymes, several random meals, $250 for a NYS inspection, and $637 for Geico insurance.
• Ernest Davis, via ED Davis Corp, received $16,000 as landlord of The Peoples Pantry to cover rent and utilities. The contract covered calendar year 2024. The supporting lease is unsigned by any tenant and bears only Mr. Davis’s signature, rendering it invalid.

This is not a paperwork quibble. Under ARPA, municipalities were required to ensure that funded programs served eligible populations, addressed pandemic-related harms, and actually occurred. Payment alone did not satisfy that obligation; oversight was required after disbursement.

In 2024, Mount Vernon treated ARPA payments as the end of the process rather than the beginning of accountability. If the City cannot demonstrate service delivery, it cannot demonstrate compliance. And without compliance, it cannot credibly claim recovery.

III. More Demolition

In 2024, the City spent $717,100 on demolition, including $91,500 for a privately owned property at 19 South Terrace Avenue and $618,300 for a City-owned property at 205 South Fifth Avenue. In both cases, the City declared an “emergency” to justify the use of ARPA funds.

While demolition of unsafe structures can, under certain circumstances, be a permissible use of ARPA funds, the manner in which the City invoked ARPA here reflects chronic mismanagement rather than a clear, well-documented public health response.

• 19 South Terrace Avenue is a privately owned property that has been vacant since 2016 due to structural instability. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the property had experienced multiple fires and had been the subject of repeated complaints from neighboring residents regarding unsafe conditions. Despite years of notice and enforcement authority, the City failed to compel the private owner to remediate or demolish the structure. In effect, the only new “emergency” was the availability of ARPA funds. Particularly troubling, the ordinance authorizing the demolition contains no provision requiring the City to recover the cost of demolition from the private owner, either through a lien, repayment agreement, or recovery upon sale of the property.
• 205 South Fifth Avenue, now owned by the City through the Urban Renewal Agency, presents a similar pattern of delayed action. The ordinance authorizing demolition acknowledges an Unsafe Building violation dating back to December 3, 2009, and confirms that the building was vacated in February 2016 due to structural instability. The dangerous condition of the property persisted for years, including after City acquisition. Although a partial collapse of a retaining wall in June 2024 heightened the urgency, the underlying hazards were neither new nor unforeseen. The City’s reliance on ARPA funds to address conditions that had been allowed to deteriorate for nearly a decade reflects reactive crisis management, not a deliberate, well-planned use of federal relief funding.

Taken together, these demolitions illustrate a broader pattern of ARPA mismanagement, characterized by a reliance on emergency declarations to justify expenditures for long-known hazards and substituting the use of federal relief funds for routine code enforcement and asset management.

ARPA was intended to address extraordinary COVID-related harms—not to backstop years of deferred action. Even where these demolitions may be defensible on safety grounds, the City’s approach exposes it to audit and clawback risk.

IV. More Vehicles

The City continued its profligate vehicle spending. In 2024, ARPA funds were used to purchase $784,320 in vehicles, including a $72,382 2024 Chevy Tahoe for Damani Bush—the same vehicle residents report seeing parked outside bars and other non-City establishments during non-business hours.

V. What Did ARPA Spending in 2024 Tell Us?

By 2024, it was unmistakably clear that there was never a strategy for real economic recovery, and certainly not one that involved direct relief to residents. The handful of resident-facing expenditures that finally appear in the records—guaranteed income, small business grants, nonprofit programming—do not reflect a coordinated effort to meet identified needs. They appear late, scattered, and largely untethered to outcomes, eligibility, or verification.

The pattern is broadly consistent:

• Direct assistance was minimal in scale relative to the City’s overall ARPA allocation.
• Programs labeled as “community” lacked defined objectives, measurable outcomes, or proof of delivery.
• Funds flowed through intermediaries without monitoring, documentation, or follow-up.
• Relief was distributed, if at all, without a framework to ensure it reached intended populations or addressed pandemic-related impacts.

Most telling is the proportion of resources involved. Of Mount Vernon’s $41,108,657 ARPA allocation, less than 5%—and only that much if the Guaranteed Income program is included—was directed toward direct relief for residents. This is not the result of poor execution of a sound plan; it is evidence that direct community assistance was never a priority.

The overwhelming majority of funds were absorbed by City operations—vehicles, demolition projects, software, and similar expenditures—many of them undertaken without foresight and now imposing ongoing costs the City cannot sustain now that the ARPA funding stream has run dry.

VI. Conclusion: Spending Without Recovery

By the end of 2024, Mount Vernon had spent or obligated most of its ARPA funds without ever building a system of accountability. The City treated ARPA as a windfall rather than a responsibility, and compliance as an afterthought rather than a prerequisite.

Recovery requires more spending. It requires asking hard questions, making tough decisions, demanding proof, and following the money all the way to its intended impact. In 2024, Mount Vernon did none of those things.

What remains is not a record of recovery, but a record of abdication—one that helped propel the City toward the fiscal cliff we recently fell off of when City Council raised our property taxes yet again. And we are not done falling.

Coming Up in Part 6 — ARPA in Mount Vernon: 2025, The Final Year
How a $41 Million Gift Becomes A 5.5% Tax Increase and Imminent Bankruptcy

By 2023, what had emerged was not a coherent recovery strategy, but a governing pattern defined by repeated vehicle purchases, recurring emergency declarations, and ad hoc spending decisions made in the absence of an articulated plan—while the City’s most flexible and consequential ARPA category—revenue replacement—remained unexplained.

I. 2023 Was a Partial Shift, But Not a Strategic One

Mount Vernon’s 2023 ARPA spending reflected a slight shift in which categories dominated the ledger—but not in how decisions were made or why those priorities were chosen.

The leading spending categories in 2023 were:

• Sewer and water infrastructure: $2.8M
• Vehicles (again): $1.3M
• The Mayor’s Guaranteed Income initiative: $900K
• Equipment: $876K

Some of this spending was plainly justified. Sewer work represents necessary, long-overdue infrastructure investment tied to public health and regulatory compliance. Certain equipment purchases may also fall within allowable ARPA uses, depending on purpose and documentation.

But even where expenditures were technically permissible, strategy remained absent. There was no articulated recovery framework explaining why these categories were prioritized, how projects were selected within them, how individual investments worked together, or how outcomes would be measured. Rather than a deliberate pivot toward resident recovery or long-term stabilization, 2023 spending reflects a reallocation of ARPA dollars across eligible categories without a unifying recovery narrative.

This matters because ARPA funds were a one-time infusion, not a recurring revenue source. That made advance planning essential. Each dollar spent should have been evaluated not only for permissibility, but for whether it reduced long-term risk or increased the City’s exposure once the aid ended.

That preparation did not occur.

Instead, the City made decisions that expanded its post-ARPA obligations. It purchased vehicles and equipment that require ongoing maintenance and replacement. It began projects that will need additional funding to complete or sustain. And it hired personnel using ARPA dollars without a credible plan to pay them once federal funding expired.

At the same time, the City appears to have used its $10 million Revenue Replacement allowance not as a bridge to stability, but as a way to mask operating losses, postponing structural corrections rather than making them.

The result is the fiscal cliff that state officials warned about. When the aid ended, Mount Vernon was not better positioned to absorb the loss. Recurring costs remained. One-time money disappeared. And the structural gap that ARPA was supposed to help close was merely deferred.

That is why, approaching 2026, the City is in a weaker financial position than it was before receiving $41 million in federal relief—and why officials are now attempting to close the gap through higher property taxes, increased fees, and new charges on residents.

II. Another Year, Another Fleet Expansion

In 2023, the City added another sixteen (16) vehicles funded with ARPA dollars, for a total cost of approximately $6,557,213 – nearly 16% of the City’s entire ARPA distribution. At this point, no argument that these purchases are tied to extraordinary pandemic needs can be entertained.

They were routine. Predictable. Embedded.

This extraordinary amount was spent without any public analysis of:

• Whether these vehicles replaced aging assets or expanded fleet size
• Whether lifecycle costs were incorporated into future budgets
• Whether alternative funding sources were considered
• Or why fleet acquisition continued to crowd out other recovery priorities

ARPA, intended as emergency stabilization funding, had effectively become Mount Vernon’s capital fleet financing mechanism.

Yet at the 2026 Board of Estimate and Contract budget hearing, the Mayor cited the need for DPW vehicles as part of the justification for a nearly 8% property tax increase—despite the City’s extensive use of ARPA funds for fleet purchases from 2021 – 2025, totaling over $7 million.

III. The $82,000 Demolition — And the Questions It Raises

In 2023, the City approved $82,000 in ARPA funds to demolish a property located at 151 Union Avenue. The City has characterized the demolition as an emergency, but its own documentation undermines that claim.

According to the ordinance authorizing the demolition, the fire at 151 Union Avenue occurred in 2020, and the property was declared “unsafe and dangerous” that same year, with the owner ordered to demolish the structure at that time. Yet the City took no action for more than two years, only invoking “imminent danger” in late 2022 and funding the demolition with ARPA dollars in 2023. The only thing that changed between late 2022 and 2023 was the availability of one-time federal aid.

Complicating matters, 151 Union was owned by Condell Hamilton, Sr., an assistant minister at the church owned and run by Comptroller Darren Morten. Condell Hamilton, Sr. is the father of Condell Hamilton, Jr., the City’s Assistant Comptroller, a position created and filled in 2022 by Hamilton, Jr., who had no substantive municipal finance or accounting background. Meanwhile, the City Charter–required First Deputy Comptroller position—mandated to be filled by a qualified accountant and designated as the Comptroller’s successor—remained vacant.

Further complicating the matter, the Mayor and the Comptroller signed the $82,000 check, but there appears to be no documented:

• Conflict-of-interest disclosure or abstention
• Enhanced or independent review
• Explanation for why ARPA funds were used instead of routine code enforcement or owner-funded remediation

This is not merely an optics issue. It is a failure of financial governance.

Leaving a charter-mandated safeguard unfilled, creating parallel positions outside the charter structure, and directing one-time federal funds to demolish a tax-delinquent private property owned by the immediate family member of a senior finance employee undermine confidence in the City’s oversight at precisely the moment strong controls were most needed.

IV. A Closer Look at the Demolitions: Recovery — or Retroactive Cleanup?

The other two ARPA-funded demolitions were likewise labeled “emergencies” and involved privately owned properties. But like the Hamilton property, neither 119 South First Avenue nor 404 South First Avenue represented newly dangerous conditions triggered by the pandemic.

Both were longstanding problem properties, declared unsafe years before COVID and long before ARPA funds became available. In each case, the City already possessed established legal tools—code enforcement, liens, court action, or capital budgeting—to address the conditions.

ARPA guidance permits demolition of vacant or abandoned buildings only in narrow circumstances, typically where the action is clearly tied to pandemic recovery or paired with documented greening, reuse, or redevelopment. Yet the City’s ARPA files contain demolition invoices only, with no accompanying contracts or plans for greening, neighborhood revitalization, or future use.

To the contrary, the records reflect the City’s expectation that it will eventually recoup its costs when the properties are sold—by the same owners who allowed the buildings to become condemned and who, in some cases, owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax arrears.

Relabeling long-ignored code enforcement failures as “emergencies” years later does not establish a pandemic nexus. While a local emergency declaration may justify immediate action under the Building Code, it does not, standing alone, transform routine municipal obligations into eligible federal recovery spending.

In practical terms, these demolitions resemble not COVID response, but ARPA substituting for ordinary City responsibilities—using one-time federal funds to address years, and in some cases decades, of deferred maintenance and enforcement.

That distinction matters. ARPA was intended to help cities recover from a public health and economic shock—not to retroactively finance problems that long predated the pandemic.

V. Nearly $1 Million in Gift Cards — And No Public Record of Distribution

As explained last week, the guaranteed income program provides residents with direct, unconditional cash support to help stabilize households facing economic hardship.

In 2023, the City purchased 1,800 gift cards valued at $500 each, totaling $900,000, ostensibly for that purpose. But the ARPA records contain no evidence showing how—or whether—those funds were distributed.

Specifically, the files include:

• No publicly available distribution data
• No recipient counts
• No eligibility criteria
• No reporting confirming whether the cards were ever fully distributed

Without this documentation, the public cannot verify whether the money reached residents, how recipients were selected, or whether the program complied with federal ARPA requirements.

VI. Still No Accounting for the $10 Million Revenue Replacement

Perhaps most critically, 2023 did nothing to resolve the central unanswered question of Mount Vernon’s ARPA program: where is the $10 million Revenue Replacement allowance?

Despite being marked as fully spent in City records, 2023 records contain:

• No transaction-level detail
• No departmental allocation
• No explanation of what services were supported
• No audit trail tying expenditures to the allowance

VII. What 2023 Reveals

By 2023, it was evident that no coherent recovery strategy would emerge. Three years into the ARPA program, the City had not articulated a plan, established a transparent framework for decision-making, or demonstrated consistent, verifiable delivery of aid to the community. The absence of a strategy was no longer provisional; it was the operating condition.

As a result, vehicles continued to multiply, emergency declarations were used to justify routine spending, significant expenditures proceeded without explanation, and the City’s most flexible ARPA category—revenue replacement—remained effectively invisible.

Next:

Part 5 — 2024: The Final Years of ARPA and the Fiscal Cliff Ahead

More vehicles, more “emergencies,” more gift cards, a $600,000 demolition, and some very questionable “community development.”

And in Part 6 – 2025: Hello, Fiscal Cliff – What happens when one-time money runs out, and the City never built anything sustainable in its place.

I. Another Year Without a Strategy

The City entered 2022 with millions in ARPA funds remaining and still none of the required systems in place to ensure accountability. There was no policy describing how projects would be selected, no guidance on what documentation departments needed to maintain, no structure for procurement, no oversight committee, and no public-facing plan of any kind.

Still, spending increased by roughly 28%, but not on residents, small businesses, public health, or pandemic recovery. Instead, the City doubled down on what had already dominated 2021: vehicles.

SUVs, sedans, garbage trucks, Explorers, Escapes, SuperDuty pickups, Interceptors, an emergency vehicle — three dozen vehicles poured into department inventories. The one-time federal relief meant to stabilize a struggling community instead became a once-in-a-generation opportunity to refresh City fleet, with no justification for why these capital purchases were necessary for recovery.

As illustrated by the chart below, this wasn’t an incidental trend. It was the center of the City’s 2022 spending.

II. The Scale of 2022 Vehicle Spending

In 2022, vehicles were the single largest category of ARPA spending, consuming 38.1% of all documented expenditures. When combined with sewer projects, vehicles + sewer infrastructure account for roughly two-thirds of all ARPA dollars spent that year.

Vehicles had already overwhelmed the 2021 spending patterns, but by 2022 the trend had hardened into a governing philosophy: if ARPA was available, the answer was vehicles.

Even the non-vehicle categories — GIS and OpenGov licensing, Microsoft Office, laptops, monitors — were almost entirely internal, administrative, and City Hall–facing. Almost nothing aimed outward toward the residents who experienced the economic impacts ARPA was designed to address.

In other words, ARPA did not flow to the people of Mount Vernon. It flowed inward — into City Hall, its systems, and its fleet.

Only two 2022 initiatives could reasonably be described as resident-directed: the Financial Navigators program and the Guaranteed Income Pilot.

III. The Illusion of Resident Programs — Less Than 2% of ARPA Reached Mount Vernon Families

Despite public messaging that highlighted initiatives like Financial Navigators and the Mayor’s Guaranteed Income program, the numbers show the reality:

Out of more than $5.7 million in 2022 ARPA spending, only $89,870 — just 1.6% — supported anything resembling direct resident assistance.

Financial Navigators — $35,000 (0.6%)

This phone-based financial counseling program, operated by the United Way, was meant to help residents navigate available aid programs. Yet the City’s records show no documentation of outcomes, reporting, call volume, or impact — all required under ARPA rules. Thus, whether the program meaningfully reached residents remains unknown.

Guaranteed Income Pilot — $54,870 (0.9%)

The Guaranteed Income Pilot is built on a simple premise: giving families direct, unconditional cash can reduce the chronic financial instability that keeps people in crisis. The program identifies eligible residents and provides them with a predictable monthly payment they can use for any purpose. Mount Vernon’s initiative was part of a national research effort examining how consistent cash support affects stress, opportunity, and long-term economic outcomes.

But in 2022, none of that support reached Mount Vernon families. Instead, the ARPA dollars associated with the program funded a research fellow who responsible for coordinating the City’s participation: managing outreach, conducting surveys and interviews, ensuring compliance, collecting data, and preparing materials for the evaluation team at the University of Pennsylvania.

When the City Council approved Mount Vernon’s involvement, it also authorized the use of $1.6 million in ARPA funds to provide grants to either 200 low-income residents or 130 low-moderate-income residents. No grants were issued in 2022.

In total, less than two cents of every ARPA dollar spent in 2022 went toward families, economic stabilization, or COVID-related hardship.

IV. What 2022 Reveals

The story of ARPA in 2022 is not defined by any single failure — it is defined by the vacuum in which decisions were made. With millions in federal funds and no functioning internal system to direct them, spending drifted toward whatever was easiest, fastest, and least scrutinized. And in Mount Vernon, the path of least resistance was fleet.

This is why 2022 stands out. Not because spending dramatically spiked, but because the City’s ARPA program revealed itself to have no meaningful, resident-facing strategy. The only consistent, well-funded through-line was vehicles. For the first two years of ARPA spending, vehicles effectively became the recovery plan.

And when a municipality spends more on SUVs than on its families, businesses, public health, housing, or long-term stability, that is not merely a budgeting quirk — it is a statement of priorities, written in line items, invoices, and fleet rolls.

By the end of 2022, the underlying problems remained unchanged: widening deficits, rising overtime, deteriorating services, and a total absence of fiscal structure or control.

And so, Mount Vernon entered 2023 with new vehicles in every department — and the same old crisis everywhere else. ARPA bought Mount Vernon a fleet, not a future.

V. STILL NO SIGN OF OUR $10 MILLION…

* * *

Coming Next – Part 4:  — Another sixteen vehicles. An $82,000 demolition tied to the father of a Comptroller employee who has over $200,000 in tax arrears. A series of questionable emergency declarations enabling ARPA spending. Nearly $1 million budgeted for gift cards with no public record of how, or whether, they were distributed. And still no trace of the missing $10 million Revenue Replacement allowance.

Now, in Part 2, we turn to the spending itself, but….

I. First Things First: What is “Revenue Replacement,” and Why Should We Care?

When COVID hit, cities across the country saw big drops in revenue — everything from parking fees to court fines to building permits. To stabilize government operations, ARPA allowed municipalities two options:

1. Calculate their actual COVID-era revenue loss, using a detailed federal formula; or
2. Elect a flat $10 million “Standard Allowance” and treat that amount as “revenue replacement.”

Mount Vernon elected the full $10 million Standard Allowance.

Revenue Replacement was one of the most important features of ARPA because it dramatically expanded what cities were allowed to spend federal relief funds on. In 2021, non-revenue-replacement ARPA dollars could be used only for a narrow set of purposes — primarily public-health response, economic recovery programs, and specific types of infrastructure like water and sewer projects. But once a city elected the $10 million “Standard Allowance,” those dollars could be treated as “revenue replacement” and used for almost any traditional government service, including routine equipment, vehicles, technology, staffing, and operations.

On paper, that election gave the city broad flexibility, but that flexibility did not mean the funds become unrestricted cash. Under federal law, even revenue replacement money required municipalities to maintain internal controls, document what the money paid for, follow procurement rules, maintain complete accounting records, submit accurate federal reports, and track expenditures within the award period.

And this is where Mount Vernon’s situation becomes uniquely problematic – Mount Vernon entered the COVID era with no reliable infrastructure, financial or otherwise. This context is essential for understanding the concerns that follow.

II. Where’s the $10 Million?

The City’s ARPA project list — which is supposed to represent every project funded with ARPA dollars and which, in total, matches the full amount the City received — includes a single line for a project titled:

Name: Supplementary General Budget;
Project ID Code: GOV-004;
Adopted Budget: $10,000,000.00;
Project Expenditure Category: 6-Revenue Replacement;
Sub-Category: 61-Provision of Government Services;
Total Obligation: $10,000,000.00;
Total Expenditures: $10,000,000.00;
Project Description: Standard Allowance’ of loss to be used to replace lost revenue and fund additional and supplemental government services . . .
Completion Status: Completed 50 or more.

But in all records reviewed thus far — including the ARPA project spreadsheet, subaward list, individual expenditure files, and transactions over and under $50,000 — not one expenditure is coded to GOV-004. Other “GOV” projects include normal entries: vehicles, GIS work, staffing, etc. But GOV-004 appears nowhere except as a single line showing the $10 million as spent.

But if the funds supported “government services,” which services? Which departments? Which expenses? So far, nothing reviewed in the FOIL production answers these questions.

If the records do not exist, the most plausible explanation is that the City believed that selecting the Standard Allowance eliminated the need for documentation — that the funds could be reported as spent without tracking how they were used. This is clearly wrong – and until the City provides that documentation, the public is left with an unresolved, critical question:

Where is the $10 million?

III. The 2021 Spending Overview

Mount Vernon’s documented 2021 ARPA spending falls into five broad categories: (1) sewer and stormwater projects, (2) building safety and engineering assessments, (3) environmental cleanup tied to consent orders, (4) fleet and equipment purchases, and (5) technology modernization.

Some expenditures clearly qualify under ARPA’s non-revenue-replacement categories — especially certain water and sewer projects. Others do not qualify, or did not qualify at the time, outside Revenue Replacement, and several expenditures fall into a conditional category: potentially eligible if the City could demonstrate a direct nexus to stormwater compliance or another authorized purpose. The City’s documentation, as produced, either does not make those connections or does so unconvincingly.

IV. The 2021 Spending At a Glance – Total: $4,455,329.01

V. What These Early Choices Reveal

The 2021 spending shows clear patterns:

• The City prioritized fleet spending over direct community support. Nearly $3.1 million — over 70% of 2021 spending — went to vehicles and internal operations, not to residents, businesses, or recovery programs.
• The strongest compliance occurred when projects aligned with federal mandates. Stormwater and sewer projects tied to EPA requirements were the most clearly eligible.
• The weakest compliance involved fleet and software purchases. These expenditures lacked proper documentation, clear ARPA justifications, or appropriate coding.
• Revenue replacement was elected — but not properly supported. The $10 million Standard Allowance requires transparent records of what the funds paid for. So far, we have seen none.
• Warning signs appeared immediately. The City’s longstanding fiscal issues — missing records, weak controls, vague memos — have already appeared in the City’s early ARPA spending support, or lack thereof.

VI. What the 2021 Spending Did — and Did Not — Accomplish

ARPA was meant to stabilize struggling cities and help residents recover from crisis.

In 2021, Mount Vernon spent over $3 million on vehicles and purchased a citywide software system that staff still struggle to use. Some expenditures were fully eligible; others appear to fall outside ARPA without Revenue Replacement documentation; and others lack any clear justification.

What’s missing from 2021 spending is just as important as what was spent:

• No visible direct relief to residents.
• No support to small businesses.
• No strategic plan for recovery.
• No tracking of alternatives or evaluation of need.
• No transparency around priorities.
• And no documentation showing where the $10 million Standard Allowance actually went.

The first year of spending set the tone — and it raised the first red flags.

Next Week: Part 3 — ARPA 2022: the Vehicle Spending Explosion

Where the money went, what changed, and why the risks got worse.

And a sneak peek at later years: small business grants to businesses that never existed, after school programs with no evidence they ever materialized, nearly $100K in gift cards, and city hall paying city hall via a city hall controlled charity…

This was not normal funding. It was emergency money designed to help cities survive and
emerge stronger.

What ARPA Was Designed to Do

ARPA had three core purposes — and clear rules about how the money could and could not be used.

1. Stabilize Local Budgets and Keep Essential Services Running

Permitted uses included:

• Filling temporary budget gaps caused by pandemic-related revenue loss
• Keeping police, fire, sanitation, and EMS services staffed and operational
• Preventing layoffs of municipal workers
• Covering pandemic-related overtime or hazard pay
• Maintaining transit, public health clinics, or schools facing shutdowns

Prohibited uses included:

• Creating new permanent positions without long-term funding
• Increasing salaries unrelated to pandemic need
• Using ARPA to mask recurring structural deficits
• Pension deposits, debt payments, or court judgments
• Undocumented gifts, bonuses, or payments
• Economic development spending unrelated to COVID impact

In short, the point was to keep cities afloat — not to reinvent government.

2. Provide Direct Relief to Residents and Small Businesses

ARPA was not only about stabilizing government operations. It was also intended to directly help
people harmed by the pandemic.

Permitted uses included:

• Emergency rental and utility assistance
• Grants to small businesses forced to close
• Food distribution and child nutrition programs
• Aid to essential workers
• Financial counseling, legal aid, and eviction prevention

Not permitted:

• Grants with no eligibility tied to pandemic impact
• Cash giveaways used as political branding
• Funding nonprofits without accountability or measurable outcomes

The money was meant to help those hit hardest — not reward allies.

3. Fund Eligible Infrastructure and Public Health Improvements

Some ARPA funds could be used for infrastructure or public health investments — but only when
they addressed pandemic-related needs or fell into explicitly authorized federal categories.

Eligible uses included:

• Broadband expansion
• Lead pipe replacement
• Water and sewer upgrades
• Public health infrastructure
• Technology modernization for government operations

Not allowed:

• Recurring software subscriptions without future funding plans
• Large capital projects launched without completion strategies
• Development deals unrelated to COVID impact or ARPA eligibility

ARPA was meant to help cities recover and rebuild — not serve as a slush fund for wish-list projects.

How Much ARPA Money Did Mount Vernon Receive?

According to the National League of Cities’ ARPA allocation data, Mount Vernon received
$41,108,657 in State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds.

• The city’s 2021 gross budget was $123,298,088
• ARPA equaled roughly one-third of an entire year’s budget

This was an unprecedented infusion of cash for a city already struggling with long-standing
financial and operational instability.

But ARPA came with conditions. Cities were required to:

• Document every expenditure
• Track procurement
• Report subrecipients
• File mandatory Treasury reports
• Retain records for at least five years

Cities that failed to comply risked having to return misused funds.

Why ARPA Mattered So Much for Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon was already in fiscal distress long before COVID.

In 2020, the New York State Comptroller issued a fiscal assessment finding that the city:

• Lacked reliable financial records
• Maintained outdated ledgers
• Failed to reconcile millions in cash accounts
• Relied on one-shot revenues to cover ongoing expenses
• Missed filing deadlines for years
• Repeatedly failed to correct prior audit findings
• Could not produce accurate fund balance or capital account data

The State warned conditions would likely worsen due to weak internal controls, recurring deficits,
and persistent lack of transparency.

In other words, ARPA did not arrive in a city with functioning fiscal systems — it arrived in a city
already under warning.

What Happened Next: The 2025 State Report

In February 2025, the New York State Comptroller released Boom or Bust? Federal Relief Aid and Local Government Finances in New York State.

The report warned that municipalities receiving large proportions of ARPA funding face a serious
risk of a “fiscal cliff” if temporary federal money is used to support recurring expenses.

When that temporary funding disappears, budgets don’t decline gradually — they drop sharply.

Critically, the report stated that Mount Vernon could not be evaluated at all because it failed to
submit required financial reports, despite receiving more than $20.5 million in ARPA funds in
2021 and 2022.

Without those filings, the State could not assess spending outcomes, assign fiscal stress scores,
or conduct basic oversight.

ARPA required responsible stewardship. It was a stress test of whether Mount Vernon could manage
major public funds with competence and transparency.

Mount Vernon failed that test.

Where This Series Goes From Here

ARPA gave Mount Vernon a once-in-a-generation opportunity to stabilize core systems, repair
infrastructure, and strengthen government capacity.

Whether that opportunity was used responsibly is the question this series will explore.

Join us Sundays on Nextdoor as a Mount Vernonite, or by signing up for the Voice of Mount Vernon.

Next: Part 2 — ARPA in Mount Vernon in 2021
How the first year of spending set the tone: early contracts, early beneficiaries, and early warning signs.