An announcement has been made that the city is now a designated Stimulus Command Center, in regards to their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve even had federal relief dollars distributed in a successful manner. Regarding the news, Mayor Lyda Krewson had this to say: “My Administration is deeply committed to maximizing and deploying this unprecedented federal investment, which will be transformative for our community. I look forward to working with these other stakeholders to direct resources to drive a local recovery that creates good jobs, is resilient and racially inclusive, and seeds innovation for the next generation.” 

What Are These Centers About?

It’s an 18-month partnership through several organizations to execute task forces comprised of public, civic and private leaders organized to plan and coordinate federal relief. This is all according to President Joe Biden’s $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Plan. There’s much anticipation that approximately $500 million will come in financial assistance from the ARP. The partnership is between Drexel University’s Nowak Metro Finance Lab, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Accelerator for America.

Mayor Lyda Krewson knows that the preliminary framework has been there to invest crucial funding. The partners are following a model to assist various locations in the United States to act upon federal legislation. This is all regarding Opportunity Zones. Therefore, the focus lies on engaging with the first group of cities. If successful, the plan is to build more stimulus command centers out of other cities. This is in order to advance the agenda emerging from the Biden Administration.

Since this initiation, Mayor Lyda Krewson has been participating in a virtual meeting with everyone involved. Surely this is the most impactful thing. It’s just dependent on just how much money comes back from the whole kerfuffle. Mayor Lyda Krewson surely knows something of this and the effects that it’ll have.