U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar announced that nearly $1 billion of American Rescue Plan Act funds would be coming to Bexar County within the next 60 days.

Area county, city and school officials gathered April 7 at Windcrest’s Takas Park Civic Center to hear the representative detail the act’s mission, the amounts each entity would receive, and the stipulations attached to its spending.

Cuellar said the funds — $947,143,000 intended for the whole of Bexar County — are designed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative economic impacts, including assistance to households, small businesses and nonprofits, or aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel and hospitality.

“We need to help drive customers to those businesses that suffered so greatly,” he said, “especially our restaurants, hotels and bars, the hospitality industry here, which was especially hard-hit.”

He said the Relief Plan Act adds $7.25 billion nationally to the nation’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, which he said will be more scrutinized and safeguarded after the reported abuses of previous PPP money released in the initial coronavirus stimulus package in 2020.

Cuellar circulated figures showing the amount each city and school district would receive. The totals include:

Bexar County, $388,580,000;

 San Antonio, $326,580,000;

 Converse, $6,140,000;

 Live Oak, $3,600,000;

Selma, $2,430,000;

 Universal City, $4,550,000;

 Windcrest, $1,280,000.

The total Bexar County take for school districts topped $211 billion. It includes:

 Northeast Independent School District projection of $140,565,000;

 Judson Independent School District projection of $52,685,000;

 East Central Independent School District projection of $18,107,00.

In all cases, Cuellar said, the recipient entity will be required to send the Department of the Treasury periodic reports with a detailed accounting of the uses of the funds.

“It has to be related (to the pandemic), but they can do it in a number of ways. It can be for water, sewage, broadband. It can be used to provide more assistance to businesses or to individuals like they’ve done in the past, with WiFi hotspots,” Cuellar said. “They can’t use that money for a tax cut or pension funds, it has to be connected to the pandemic.”

Money going to school districts, for example, “could be spent on ventilation, reduced class sizes, protective equipment, anything that would make it safer for kids to get back into the classroom,” he said.

A city or county with a population of more than 50,000 would get their money directly, through modified CDBG funding. Entities below that would receive their money through the state within a 60-day period.

“Depending on your size, it’ll go through the state, but there’s a timetable for them to release that money,” the representative said.

As a member of the National League of Cities, Live Oak Mayor Mary Dennis said she has been a part of the months-long process to develop a relief package.

“I’ve known about this for some time, but to see it come to fruition today was very exciting,” Dennis said.

She said portions of Live Oak’s $3.6 million will be used to address several quality of life issues including water, infrastructure, and firming up critical supply areas.

“One of the things we’re going to focus on is something that happened to all of us, the winter storm. How do we firm up our critical areas, our fire station, our water supply places, for instance,” Dennis said. “We’re going to look at that to see how we can better help ourselves and be more prepared for that type of situation.”

The mayor said there were guidelines shared during the meeting relative to what cities and school districts can and can’t do with the funding.

“We’ll make sure we are within those guidelines and do the best we can to make it better for our citizens,” she added.

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