A look at the American Rescue Plan Cuts
The City has a $200M budget hole to fill, and for revenues, they’re dipping into already-allocated American Rescue Plan dollars. The American Rescue Plan was the direct allocation of federal money the City of New Orleans received for COVID relief. It was intended to help the City and its people recover from economic losses due to the pandemic (More about ARPA here).
A total of $14.7 Million is being diverted from 32 ARPA programs. (Source) Here’s a rundown on what’s being cut, and from whom.
Breakdown by Impact Category
Programs for youth make up the largest share of the cuts. Several Youth serving organizations have created petitions and advocacy campaigns to save these programs from cuts: Young Artist Movement (a juvenile detention diversion program)
If you compare how much was cut from the program relative to how much was allocated to begin with, you can see that the cuts come mostly from the programs that had smaller initial allocations: Youth-serving programs, ARPA Program administration, health, and community safety.
