I am writing out of great concern for keeping President Joe Biden’s many large grants to our city safe from incoming president Donald Trump’s legal clawbacks. He has already voiced his plans before even taking office that he will try to claw back Biden grants from the blue states that did not vote for him.
The town of Amherst planner and Town Council members smartly jumped at this risk, involved their financial planner and city lawyer to move all their Biden grants to accounts that cannot be clawed back by Trump or the federal government as long as they spent it in less than two years.
It would have been helpful to their public schools if they had transferred a large portion of these grants to the schools now, but at least by taking these steps they have kept the grants safe and bought residents time to make public comments on grants that will still exist in Amherst.
How about Northampton though? Where is our safety net for Biden funds for the city of Northampton?
The news I bring you is not good. We have two groups here, Support Our Schools (SOS) that I belong to and the mayor with City Council members. SOS is trying to prevent the mayor from transferring both savings from laying off city teachers, teacher aides, counselors etc. and Biden grants and putting those commingled funds into the city general fund and the rainy day fund. They want her to take these funds and bring back the positions eliminated now.
The mayor and some City Council members want to save these funds to cover costs for Picture Main Street construction and costs to transform the former First Baptist Church into the new Resilience Hub for daytime services for the homeless.
I think it does make sense to spend a large amount of city savings and all the Biden grants on what SOS thinks is essential to providing a high-quality education for all our students, increases for Fire Department/EMS and city sidewalks near downtown, but if the mayor insists on transferring all these funds to funds that the Biden portion can be clawed back by Trump we would all be better off if funds were moved to accounts Trump could not touch, even if the funds were tied up for a while in longer term accounts.
I think we all and both groups need to consider the bigger picture of risk and now is the time to circle the wagons and protect the funds we have and not overstretching ourselves with funding Picture Main Street or the renovation of the new Hub. We need to fund the essentials! Please contact the mayor’s office to push her to contact the town of Amherst director of financial planning and their city lawyer to ask for their help to protect our Biden grants and get this done!
Sara Elkins lives in Northampton.