STEUBENVILLE — City officials voiced concern Tuesday that they’re running out of time to spend the last of their American Rescue Plan Act funds.

The ARPA use-it-or-lose-it deadline is Dec. 31: Any ARPA funds not allocated to eligible projects by then will have to be returned.

And with just a handful of meetings left in 2024, city officials acknowledged they’re under the funding gun.

“By the end of this year the money has to be obligated to a project,” Finance Director Dave Lewis said. “It doesn’t have to be spent, but it has to be obligated in the system.”

Of the $14,598,300 the city received in COVID relief funding, $10 million was moved into the general fund. The remaining $4,598,300 was classified as ARPA money, which limits how it can be used. City Council approved using most of the ARPA money for wastewater infrastructure, though nearly $56,630 was held back for project contingencies.

Fourth Ward Councilman Royal Mayo asked Lewis “how much is actually left and what have we done to guarantee that with this money we got for fee (ARPA), we won’t have to give any of it back?”

“It would be absolutely insane” not to allocate it all, he said.

Lewis, however, couldn’t give him a definitive answer: Council had directed nearly all of the $4,598,300 in ARPA money to sewage infrastructure — the Lincoln Boulevard sewage project, the CS03 Phase 2 overflow, emergency slip repairs on Lauretta Drive and Sinclair Avenue and the Bryden Road lift station, also an emergency.

The problem is that numbers haven’t been finalized for several of those projects due to unforeseen complications, though Sanitation Supervisor Chuck Murphy expects to get the numbers finalized in the next couple of weeks.

“I think we need to get an ordinance written to move whatever is left to the headworks project,” Lewis told council when pressed. “It all has to be finalized in a few weeks…You guys need to get these passed.”

Law Director Costa Mastros said the “drop-dead” date to encumber funds to sunshine the ARPA ordinance is Dec. 10.