Originally Published on December 28, 2025

Mount Vernon's covid relief funds. The trail of misuse, unaccountability, public betrayal, and government corruption.

THE SUNDAY SERIES(By The Integrity Project)

Part 5 — ARPA in Mount Vernon: 2024When Direct Community Assistance Appeared, But Oversight Remained Hidden

By 2024, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) program in Mount Vernon had entered its fourth and next to final year. The emergency phase of the pandemic was long over, and the federal government’s expectation was that recipients had either spent, obligated, or clearly planned the use of their ARPA funds. That was not the case in Mount Vernon.

Instead, 2024 brought more of the same: lack of planning, random spending, fabricated emergencies, and more vehicles. One thing did change, however. For the first time, ARPA spending began to include items that appeared to be direct community support, “community development,” “small business grants,” program checks, and resident-facing initiatives. In most cities, this would have been a positive development.

But this is Mount Vernon.And while Mount Vernon is good at spending other people’s money, ARPA wasn’t just about cutting checks. It required documentation, controls, procurement discipline, and, when third parties were paid to deliver services, real oversight. The City’s 2024 reporting shows money leaving City Hall, but records produced in response to our FOIL request do not show the basic follow-up needed to verify what was delivered, who received assistance, or whether funds were distributed fairly and lawfully. In short, disbursement was not accompanied by oversight. To the extent funds actually left City Hall, the City appears to have stopped asking questions once the checks cleared.Finally, while 2024 marked the year City officials seemed to remember that ARPA was supposed to offer direct assistance to residents, when we zoom out, we see that across the City’s $41,108,657 ARPA award, less than 5% went to direct relief for Mount Vernon residents.I. Mayor’s Guaranteed Income ProgramGuaranteed Income (“GI”) programs provide regular, no-strings-attached cash payments, often monthly stipends to help individuals meet basic needs, reduce poverty, and build financial stability. These programs are typically temporary pilot initiatives, publicly or privately funded, and differ from traditional welfare programs in that funds may be spent without restrictions. Between 2023 and 2024, the City spent $1 million in ARPA funds on the Mayor’s Guaranteed Income program, purchasing 2,000 $500 gift cards to be distributed monthly to 200 low income individuals or families for one year. Eligibility was based on annual income limits.Interestingly, the ordinance authorizing the program raised the approved amount to $1.65 million from $1.2 million. But the City’s receipts show purchases totaling only $1 million, while the City’s federal ARPA reports show expenditures of $1.2 million. No records were produced showing actual distribution to recipients.Presumably, however, somewhere out there are 200 low income individuals or families who received $500 per month for a year, $6,000 each.II. The “Community Development” CatchallThe City spent more than $700,000 in ARPA funds under the broad category of “Community Development.” Some expenditures appear, on their face, to support worthwhile community efforts:

• 914Lock received $25,000 to purchase a transport van for food distribution and hot meals for vulnerable populations. The contract covered October 25, 2024, through December 31, 2024, and required weekly hot meal delivery to an average of 200 people per month. No documentation shows where or whether meals were delivered.
• Y-COP received $25,000 to purchase a 15 passenger van to transport program participants. The contract covered May 1, 2024, through May 30, 2025, but contained no substantive programmatic requirements, effectively functioning as a vehicle donation.
• Mercy University received $200,000 (of a $400,000 commitment) for administrative support and academic oversight of the City’s Financial Empowerment Center. The contract term runs from January 16, 2024, through January 16, 2026.

• Beyond these, the record becomes increasingly problematic. A proliferation of small business grants, many purportedly for after school or community programs, lacks evidence that the programs ever occurred. With few exceptions, files contain no monitoring reports, attendance records, proof of service delivery, evaluations, or other documentation showing that funded activities took place.
• In many cases, contract “scopes of work” are so vague that merely operating a business would satisfy the requirements. For example, Cluster Inc. received $20,000 to “provide services to the Mount Vernon community that will directory impact the youth and strength of the community.” Even where scopes were more detailed, narratives often describe routine business expenses, such as payroll rather than addressing a COVID-related impact. When receipts are included, they typically confirm only that someone was paid, not that services were delivered. On their face, many of these programs appear community run and community focused, but the documentation does not substantiate that appearance.
• Several grants raise more serious concerns regarding conflicts of interest and oversight failures:

• Friends of Mount Vernon Arts, Recreation, and Youth Programs received $60,000. The charity is run by Comptroller Darren Morton and other City Hall employees. The contract term was June 1, 2024, through July 30, 2025, to fund youth sports programming. No documentation shows that services were delivered. Most troubling, the disbursement checks were co-signed by Comptroller Morton himself.

• Westchester Latinos Unidos received $30,000. The organization is run by Elvira Castillo, a 2024 City Council candidate who ran on the Mayor and developer supported RiseUp Mount Vernon slate. Funds were to support four ESL classes and four citizenship classes. No documentation shows that these services occurred.
• Friendship for Tots received $20,000 to fund instructors providing wraparound services for children ages 2 to 6. The contract ran from March 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. While the file contains payroll summaries, there is no evidence that contracted services were delivered.
• The Revelators, a Yonkers-based arts program, received $20,000 for a two-day run of The Story at the Doles Center on November 16–17, 2024. The organization lists an “office” at an apartment complex in Mount Vernon. No documentation shows that performances occurred. Receipts show a bizarre array of charged expenses including $500 to “clean and sanitize” a car, nearly $3,000 for car repairs, children’s clothing, gluten-free chewable enzymes, several random meals, $250 for a NYS inspection, and $637 for Geico insurance.
• Ernest Davis, via ED Davis Corp, received $16,000 as landlord of The Peoples Pantry to cover rent and utilities. The contract covered calendar year 2024. The supporting lease is unsigned by any tenant and bears only Mr. Davis’s signature, rendering it invalid.
• This is not a paperwork quibble. Under ARPA, municipalities were required to ensure that funded programs served eligible populations, addressed pandemic-related harms, and actually occurred. Payment alone did not satisfy that obligation; oversight was required after disbursement.
• In 2024, Mount Vernon treated ARPA payments as the end of the process rather than the beginning of accountability. If the City cannot demonstrate service delivery, it cannot demonstrate compliance. And without compliance, it cannot credibly claim recovery.
• III. More Demolition
• In 2024, the City spent $717,100 on demolition, including $91,500 for a privately owned property at 19 South Terrace Avenue and $618,300 for a City-owned property at 205 South Fifth Avenue. In both cases, the City declared an “emergency” to justify the use of ARPA funds.
• While demolition of unsafe structures can, under certain circumstances, be a permissible use of ARPA funds, the manner in which the City invoked ARPA here reflects chronic mismanagement rather than a clear, well documented public health response.

• 19 South Terrace Avenue is a privately owned property that has been vacant since 2016 due to structural instability. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the property had experienced multiple fires and had been the subject of repeated complaints from neighboring residents regarding unsafe conditions. Despite years of notice and enforcement authority, the City failed to compel the private owner to remediate or demolish the structure. In effect, the only new “emergency” was the availability of ARPA funds. Particularly troubling, the ordinance authorizing the demolition contains no provision requiring the City to recover the cost of demolition from the private owner, either through a lien, repayment agreement, or recovery upon sale of the property.The issue is not whether demolition was necessary, but why years of noncompliance culminated in a federally funded bailout rather than timely enforcement.• 205 South Fifth Avenue, now owned by the City through the Urban Renewal Agency, presents a similar pattern of delayed action. The ordinance authorizing demolition acknowledges an Unsafe Building violation dating back to December 3, 2009, and confirms that the building was vacated in February 2016 due to structural instability. The dangerous condition of the property persisted for years, including after City acquisition.Although a partial collapse of a retaining wall in June 2024 heightened the urgency, the underlying hazards were neither new nor unforeseen. The City’s reliance on ARPA funds to address conditions that had been allowed to deteriorate for nearly a decade reflects reactive crisis management, not a deliberate, well-planned use of federal relief funding.Taken together, these demolitions illustrate a broader pattern of ARPA mismanagement, characterized by a reliance on emergency declarations to justify expenditures for long-known hazards and substituting the use of federal relief funds for routine code enforcement and asset management.ARPA was intended to address extraordinary COVID-related harms, not to backstop years of deferred action. Even where these demolitions may be defensible on safety grounds, the City’s approach exposes it to audit and clawback risk.IV. More VehiclesThe City continued its profligate vehicle spending. In 2024, ARPA funds were used to purchase $784,320 in vehicles, including a $72,382 2024 Chevy Tahoe for Damani Bush, the same vehicle residents report seeing parked outside bars and other non City establishments during non business hours.V. What Did ARPA Spending in 2024 Tell Us?By 2024, it was unmistakably clear that there was never a strategy for real economic recovery, and certainly not one that involved direct relief to residents. The handful of resident-facing expenditures that finally appear in the records, guaranteed income, small business grants, nonprofit programming, do not reflect a coordinated effort to meet identified needs. They appear late, scattered, and largely untethered to outcomes, eligibility, or verification.The pattern is broadly consistent:

• Direct assistance was minimal in scale relative to the City’s overall ARPA allocation.
• Programs labeled as “community” lacked defined objectives, measurable outcomes, or
• proof of delivery.
• Funds flowed through intermediaries without monitoring, documentation, or follow up.
• Relief was distributed, if at all, without a framework to ensure it reached intended
• populations or addressed pandemic-related impacts.
• Most telling is the proportion of resources involved. Of Mount Vernon’s $41,108,657 ARPA allocation, less than 5%, and only that much if the Guaranteed Income program is included, was directed toward direct relief for residents. This is not the result of poor execution of a sound plan; it is evidence that direct community assistance was never a priority. The overwhelming majority of funds were absorbed by City operations, vehicles, demolition projects, software, and similar expenditures, many of them undertaken without foresight and now imposing ongoing costs the City cannot sustain now that the ARPA funding stream has run dry.
• VI. Conclusion: Spending Without Recovery
• By the end of 2024, Mount Vernon had spent or obligated most of its ARPA funds without ever building a system of accountability. The City treated ARPA as a windfall rather than a responsibility, and compliance as an afterthought rather than a prerequisite.
• Recovery requires more spending. It requires asking hard questions, making tough decisions, demanding proof, and following the money all the way to its intended impact. In 2024, Mount Vernon did none of those things.
• What remains is not a record of recovery, but a record of abdication, one that helped propel the City toward the fiscal cliff we recently fell off of when City Council raised our property taxes yet again. And we are not done falling.
• Coming Up in Part 6 ARPA in Mount Vernon: 2025, The Final Year
• How a $41 Million Gift Becomes A 5.5% Tax Increase and Imminent Bankruptcy 

Stay informed. Stay involved. The time to act is NOW!

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