Bangor and Penobscot County have 6 months to figure out how to spend $5.6M

Bangor and Penobscot County must finalize plans to spend a combined $5.6 million in federal pandemic relief funding by the end of this year or it vanishes.

Bangor has allocated $17.9 million of the more than $20 million it received from the federal government, leaving roughly $2.56 million left to spend, according to Debbie Laurie, Bangor’s city manager. The county has roughly $3 million in unallocated funds left from its original $29.5 million , Grant Manager Wendy Dana said.

The federal funding the city and county received comes from the American Rescue Plan Act, which Congress passed in 2021. The money, intended to help communities recover from the health and economic effects of the pandemic, must be allocated by Dec. 31, 2024 and spent by Dec. 31, 2027.

Two years passed between Bangor receiving the first portion of its $20.8 million lump sum in May 2021 and city councilors approving the first award from the 60 applications for funding the city received. The city was the slowest of Maine’s biggest communities to make plans for its money.

In the meantime, local organizations wondered when and how they could request funding to address some of the region’s most pressing issues, including homelessness, substance use disorder and a lack of child care.

Cara Pelletier, Bangor’s city council chair, said the council has agreed to prioritizing improving and generating affordable housing to help address the local and statewide housing shortage.

Regardless of where the money goes, Pelletier said she’s not concerned about allocating it all by the end-of-year deadline.

“I will not let a single dollar go unspent, even if it means midnight meetings on Dec. 31, because the city of Bangor deserves that,” Pelletier said.

City councilors are interested in using the remaining funding to pay to add infrastructure, such as sewer, water and power, to 10-acres of city-owned land on Grandview Avenue, Laurie said.

Bringing utilities and a road to the property could help entice a private developer to build housing affordable for people who make 80 to 120 percent of the area median income. That income bracket, often called “the missing middle,” makes too much to qualify for most housing subsidies, but still can’t afford market-rate housing, either as a renter or buyer.

Bangor’s most recent ARPA allocation was $250,000 to the Quality Housing Provider Program, Laurie said. The program, which falls under the city’s Rental Registry Pilot Program, offers low-cost loans to landlords to support improvements to their rental units.

Bangor’s allocations have ranged in size from $40,000 to nearly $2.5 million, according to a list of the awards on the city’s website . Bangor’s largest award thus far was a $2.48 million grant to the Penobscot Community Health Center, issued in September 2023, to renovate and expand the Hope House Health and Living Center, one of the city’s two homeless shelters.

Bangor city councilors will hold a workshop in late July to evaluate the city’s remaining funding and review how beneficiaries have used their awards. Penobscot County will not take any more subrecipient grant requests for the larger projects as they work through remaining requests and allocate money, commissioners decided at a meeting Tuesday.

County departments requested a total of $2 million for various projects and items. Not everything will be approved, Commissioner Peter Baldacci said at the meeting. Department heads have also found other ways to purchase some requests.

Up to $10 million can be spent on government projects and services, which the county will not come anywhere close to spending, Dana said.

Decisions about distributing most of the remaining funds likely won’t be made until the fall as budget discussions begin, County Administrator Scott Adkins said at the meeting.

“[Commissioners are] also looking forward to knowing that all of our money is allocated,” Dana said.

Each commissioner had $900,000 to distribute within their district in the beginning, which was given out in amounts of less than $50,000.

Commissioner Peter Baldacci has $57,587 left, while Andre Cushing has $35,347. Dave Marshall has $827 left. He joined the commission in 2022, after unseating Laura Sanborn, who distributed a large portion of the money, Dana said.

As the end of the year approaches, Dana is reaching out to organizations that received money to make sure the projects are moving forward. If it isn’t working, the money needs to be returned quickly so it can be allocated again before Dec. 31. Any money that isn’t allocated is returned to the federal government, which is not something the county wants, she said.

A problem people are running into is finding contractors to make progress on their projects, Dana said.

One of the biggest dispersals was to the Bangor YMCA, which received $3 million from the county. They have spent $1 million so far, Dana said.

“We’ve had so many great nonprofits that we’ve already disbursed funding to,” Dana said. “Then they’ve been very good about getting their projects going.”