ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – A Pine Lawn city official agrees the city should help a senior citizen get her air conditioner fixed to help keep her cool in the searing heat.
Resident Dana Woods had asked the city to use $2,000 in ARPA funds to solve her problem, and provide some of those funds for other senior citizens in need.
Mayor Terry Epps said the funds were restricted and couldn’t be used that way, but now, a Pine Lawn aldermen who saw our first report disagrees with that.
Alderwoman Dionne Jones says a program should have been set up with the ARPA funds to help seniors.
“A resident she sent me the story that you did, and I was sad,” she said. “We just had a meeting about how we might use our ARPA funds, and I made a motion that we use a portion of our funds to start a home repair programs, which would have helped the resident that was in your story.”
Jones said Pine Lawn would not be the first to use ARPA money this way.
“I wanted to use the money in some way to build up the community and that may have been a home repair program, because if my neighbor gets their house fixed, I’m not angry at them for that. I’m happy they were able to get their house repaired,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to use the money for, that’s what residents in my ward said that they wanted it for; and streets and lighting.”
Woods first called FOX 2 after learning Pine Lawn got $600,000 in ARPA funds.
“And I can’t get any help from Pine Lawn. They were saying they were going to get back to me, and they never did,” she said. “They had funds, they had got grants from the government and so forth. I don’t know if they issued it out or gave it to the people that they know. I didn’t get anything.”
Mayor Epps went to Woods’ house to speak with her in-person. The mayor told her the ARPA funds were restricted, and that the city had already used 90% of that money to pay for the police department.
But Alderwoman Jones said Pine Lawn handled this all wrong from the beginning.
“When we first received the ARPA money, I asked, and other people asked, that we have a town hall meeting so that we can talk to the residents about how we might spend that money, as other cities did around the country, including St Louis, and including St Louis County,” Jones said. “They did questionnaires, all of that. That never happened (here).”