After a year of lobbying, the federal government has approved a stimulus bill that includes money for local governments.

Chautauqua County stands to get $25 million from the stimulus bill. Among municipalities, Jamestown is to get around $28 million and Dunkirk $11 million. Chautauqua County municipalities as a whole are looking at $83 million.

Other county municipalities seeing significant funding include: the town of Pomfret, $2.6 million; village of Fredonia, $1.9 million; town of Ellicott, $1.5 million; town of Busti, $1.3 million; town of Hanover, $1.2 million; town of Westfield, $849,986; town of Ellery, $801,758; town of Chautauqua, $786,421; town of Carroll, $619,011. All other municipalities were targeted to receive between $555,447 in the village of Westfield to $83,151 in the village of Panama.

The money can be used to respond to or mitigate COVID-19 and its economic impacts, cover the costs incurred as a result of such emergency, replace revenue that was lost, delayed, or decreased. That gives governments a lot of leeway how to spend this money because every local budget was impacted in some way, shape or form by COVID-19.

Local governments and their lobbying arms like the New York Association of Counties and New York Conference of Mayors have begged for this money. The question now is what will you do with it?