Four years ago this March, the federal government opened wide a massive floodgate of $1.9 trillion on the American people and their communities to recover from the long-lasting harms caused by the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic.

A portion of that relief package totaling $350 billion flowed directly into communities of all shapes and sizes across the country. Here in the Mahoning Valley, dozens of cities, villages and townships soaked in a whopping $250 million in those State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds.

The impact of that massive and unexpected infusion of largesse largely has been positive.

In the nation, ARP fueled the fastest and most prosperous economic recovery in the world. As The Economist magazine pointed out late last year, the current American economy is “the envy of the world” in productivity, job gains, unemployment plunges and Gross Domestic Product surges. It trumpeted that the U.S. far surpasses any of the other Great 7 democracies of the Western world in the speed and force of its recovery from the COVID-19-induced recession.

In the Valley, ARP has largely lived up to its intent of funding projects to usher in positive transformational improvements. Though there have been a few hiccups, most notably in green-lighting some shortsighted and misguided projects, the vast majority of the ARP program locally has potential to leave a beneficial imprint on our region for decades to come.

Projects to improve and update aging infrastructure and to promote repopulation of our region clearly will have enduring impact.

For example, in Youngstown, millions of dollars in ARP grants are expected to finance elimination of the last vestiges of aging, abandoned housing, some of which has stood as seedy blight for decades. Once the demolition is complete, more ARP funds will help finance innovative programs for new home construction and remodeling to help reverse decades of population loss in the Valley’s largest urban center.

In Trumbull County, about $2.7 million in ARP funding will bolster long-overdue road, sewer and other infrastructure improvements in one of the most heavily industrialized sectors of the Valley, the Golden Triangle, in Warren and Howland.

While we applaud the planning and swift action in approving those and other projects by the federal deadline of Dec. 31 last year, the route to carrying those once pie-in-the-sky dream projects to the finish line remains long. Short-term and long-term challenges remain for communities that benefited from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds

In the short term, municipal and township leaders still have critical deadlines to meet. The most important one requires that all ARP funding be spent by the end of next year. That means work should be ongoing now to not only beat that deadline by many months, but also to realize the benefits of infrastructure, housing and other community improvements as soon as humanly possible. To those ends, local leaders must scrupulously monitor project work and spending. Any significant delays or setbacks could doom the best of plans, as well as the letter and spirit of the ambitious American Rescue Plan.

Once overcoming those short-term hurdles, officials must then labor to ensure that benefits provided by ARP are not fleeting.

In Youngstown, for example, the $2.4 million in ARP grant funding to hire community health workers will dry up in time. To ensure the same level of service remains in place, leaders must search out other grant sources or state and federal funding to keep the workers and the assets they bring to community health firmly in place.

At all costs, public officials must resist the temptation to sock it to taxpayers with rate hikes or added fees to finance long-term continuation of the healthiest assets of the ARP program.

Similarly, nonprofit agencies that profited from ARP must make the best of their one-time bonanza of bucks. In Trumbull County, for example, institutions such as the Hubbard and Howland historical societies, Braceville Community Foundation, Harriet Upton Taylor Association and others were awarded about $650,000 in ARP funds. These and similar groups throughout the Valley must monitor projects and spending carefully without expecting additional assistance from federal, state or local government entities to modify or expand them.

To be sure, with the unprecedented windfall of ARP, communities in the nation and the Valley found their footing to plan significant and transformative improvements that otherwise would never have been possible. Today, without the unprecedented windfall of ARP, those same communities must serve as responsible long-term stewards over the fruits that the COVID-19 relief act has wrought.