How Mayor Steinberg wants Sacramento to spend its $89 million coronavirus stimulus check
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg proposed Thursday spending tens of millions of dollars in federal stimulus aid on small business assistance, youth and workforce training programs, housing for the homeless and the arts and tourism.
In a seven-page letter to the City Council posted to a city website Thursday, Steinberg laid out four categories to spend $89 million in coronavirus stimulus money the city recently received, with a focus on helping the city rebound economically from the crisis.
“Sacramento seven weeks ago had a significant amount of momentum on the economic front and now it has been temporarily affected and affected in very serious ways,” Steinberg said. “So this money is intended to help us regain that momentum. When you look at every category and every specific idea within the category, all of it relates to COVID-19 but also relates to what it’s going to take to continue what we just started here in Sacramento.”
The details will likely change, but the letter is intended to start the conversation with the City Council and the public, Steinberg said.
Steinberg proposed spending the money in the following categories:
$20 million for small business
▪ A new small business grant program targeted specifically for underserved neighborhoods, commercial corridors and minority-owned businesses.
▪ Investments in the state I-Bank Small Business Disaster Relief Loan Guarantee Program or other programs that support innovation and entrepreneurship.
▪ Funding for personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies for businesses.
▪ Support for location organizations and Chambers of Commerce programs that help small businesses access government funding and technical assistance.
$20 million for youth and workforce training
▪ Create a Sacramento Health Corps to train hundreds of unemployed people in contact tracing, the practice of identifying who infected people have spread the virus to.
▪ Expand high school and young adult career technical education, as well as adult retraining and upskilling programs. This will allow more people to find jobs in high-need sectors of construction, health care, information technology, cybersecurity, agriculture and public service.
▪ Provide Internet service to the city’s underserved communities
▪ Expand childcare services so working parents can go back to work as the state reopens
▪ Fund after-school and youth enrichment programs that were impacted by the crisis
$20 million to house homeless placed in motels during crisis
▪ Expand the Flexible Housing Program that provides rental assistance and other services.
▪ Purchase efficiency housing units that can be built faster and less expensive than traditional affordable housing. These could include manufactured, modular, shipping containers or other types.
▪ Acquire motels that can be used as transitional and single-room occupancy housing until they are ultimately developed into permanent housing.
$20 million on arts, creative economy and tourism
▪ Create a grant program for arts and cultural institutions, which may include the Community Center Theater, the Sacramento Ballet, the Philharmonic, the Choral Society and Orchestra, the Crocker Art Museum, the Sacramento Zoo, Fairytale Town, the Powerhouse Science Center, CLARA and the Sacramento History Museum.
▪ Create a grant program for nonprofits focused on underserved communities that have had little to no access to relief funds.
▪ Support for Visit Sacramento and for the businesses in the Old Sacramento Waterfront.
▪ Support for the City-County Department of Education partnership in the Arts Education Consortium to restore skill-based instruction and arts related enrichment back to the schools when they reopen.
The proposal leaves about $9 million for other reimbursable expenses, such as food delivery services and testing
The virus is causing the city to lose an estimated $92 million in revenue it had projected to receive. The stimulus checks cannot be used to fill budget shortfalls, however, and must be spent by Dec. 31, 2020.
Sacramento County, which serves as the city’s public health arm, has received a roughly $181 million federal stimulus check.
The City Council is holding a virtual public workshop meeting to discuss how to spend the stimulus check at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
The council will likely make decisions about how to spend the money in phases over the next 60 to 90 days, Steinberg said.
