Everett has eight weeks left to finish spending $47.2 million in federal pandemic relief, and the official now in charge of closing out the program says she is lining up construction contracts at two city buildings to make sure none of it goes back to Washington.
The clearest public accounting of the money came on October 26, when Chief Development Officer Monica Lamboy walked a City Council committee through a slide deck on the American Rescue Plan Act program. We reported that night’s headline: there will be no second round of grants for small businesses. This story goes through the rest of the ledger, using Lamboy’s presentation, the city’s own ARPA dashboard, bid records and the grant application the city posted in 2025.
How Everett got $47.2 million
Lamboy told the committee the city received about $33.3 million in one award and another $13.9 million in a second, for a total of roughly $47.2 million. The city’s ARPA page tells the same story in a different order. Everett was first awarded $13.8 million, the page says, and a few months later the state added $33.3 million in Rescue Act money because Everett was one of four communities then-Gov. Charlie Baker described as “disproportionately impacted by the virus.”
Federal rules set two deadlines. Every dollar had to be committed to a specific project by December 31, 2024, and every dollar has to be paid out by December 31, 2026. Lamboy said the city locked in 25 projects before the first deadline and cannot add any now. It can only move money among the 25.
“A check has to be cut through our financial system no later than 11:59 on December 31,” she said.
The 25 projects
The city’s online ARPA dashboard lists the same 25 projects with a combined budget of $47,200,171. Its data was last refreshed at the end of June 2025, so it is a picture of the program 16 months ago, when $26.5 million, or 56 percent, had been spent. The budgets it shows:
- City building re-roof: $10,000,000. Only $18,738 had been spent by mid-2025.
- Devens School purchase: $9,900,000, fully spent.
- Water infrastructure: $4,695,061, fully spent, plus $219,431 for other water and sewer work. Lamboy described this as more than $5 million for the Ferry Street water and streetscape project.
- Public health initiatives: $4,312,000.
- Housing assistance through nonprofits: $3,700,000.
- Senior meals: $3,480,840. Lamboy said the final figure was over $4 million.
- Job training: $1,750,000. Lamboy put the total for student job training at just over $2 million.
- Administrative expenses: $1,411,440, and a separate financial compliance line of $1,035,088.
- Education and child care: $1,380,000.
- Emergency housing assistance: $1,083,657.
- Food assistance: $1,080,000.
- Youth-focused initiatives: $1,000,000.
- Parks and recreation: $883,000. Lamboy said $880,000 went into Woodland Park.
- Economic recovery assistance: $745,000, the small business program.
The rest are small pandemic-era items: $229,598 to sanitize public buildings, $152,332 for community outreach, $45,717 for remote meeting access, $30,000 for small women- and minority-owned businesses, $28,000 for a Pope John feasibility study, and less than $12,000 each for a testing site, protective equipment, modular classrooms and academic services.
Administration and compliance together come to $2,446,528, about 5 percent of the award. Lamboy said the administrative money pays for city staff and a consultant.
The roof that came in under budget
The largest single line, $10 million, was set aside to replace the roof at 548 Broadway, the former Everett High School. Lamboy said the roof was started in the summer of 2025 and is finished, and that it cost only about $6 million. The difference is what the city has been spending since. Hazardous materials have been removed from the building, three new heating, ventilation and air conditioning units are to be installed before December 31, and engineers are completing a detailed assessment of the electrical and fire systems.
The HVAC contract is the largest piece still open. Lamboy said it was going through the signature process and “is going to use up any remaining balance that we have in the program.” It will also let the city remove the temporary boiler that she said has been parked outside the building for a couple of years.
At 888 Broadway, the former Pope John XXIII High School, the original commitment was the $28,000 study. Lamboy said that has grown to include hazardous materials removal, a full building assessment and completed design plans for a new roof, which she said the building badly needs. There is no ARPA money to build that roof. The plans will be ready, she said, “when funding is available.”
Ward 6 Councilor Peter Pietrantonio questioned whether buildings were what the money was for. “I thought the ARPA funds were for COVID related losses,” he said. Lamboy answered that the law is not that narrow and that construction spending puts money back into the economy. Pietrantonio also said he remembered voting on a roof, not on HVAC or studies. Lamboy said ARPA is managed by the executive office, which is why the changes did not come to the council.
42 grants for small business
The resolution that brought Lamboy to the committee, sponsored by Councilors Martins, Alcy Jabouin and Marchese, asked that money recovered from other projects go to small businesses that never got to apply. The record shows how narrow that program was.
Lamboy said design work began in February 2024 but no application went out until April 2025. The application the city posted, titled the Small Business and Local Arts Economic Recovery Grant, runs 11 pages and was offered in eight languages. It was due June 30, 2025, by email or by hand to the Everett Chamber of Commerce. The city held one Zoom webinar on it, on May 19, 2025.
Applicants had to be current on local taxes and were asked for tax returns and statements of activities for every year from 2019 through 2024, along with receipts for any pandemic expenses they wanted reimbursed. The form warned that the city and the chamber “reserve the right to award less funds than requested.”
That is what happened. Lamboy said 48 businesses and nonprofits applied and 42 were found eligible. The six turned down had incomplete paperwork, were outside an eligible census tract or were not an eligible type of business. Rather than size each award to the loss, the administration of the time split the pot. Everyone who documented at least $17,800 in losses or expenses got about $17,800, and a few who documented less got less. Forty-two awards at that figure would total about $747,600, which squares with the $745,000 budget line.
Five of the recipients were nonprofits, Lamboy said: Arts for Everett, the Joint Committee for Children’s Health Care, the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers, Centro Comunitario Scalabrini and the Sikh Sangat Society of Boston. The businesses she read from the list included Everett Furniture Discount, Coffee in a Box and Brazilian Bakery Corp.
“Only 48 people applied for the ARPA money,” Ward 1 Councilor Michele Capone said. “That’s just amazing.” Pietrantonio asked whether a shop with two employees and one with 20 should have received the same check. “That was the decision at the time,” Lamboy said.
Nonprofits, rent and a youth program that fell short
A city slide deck from July 2024 put $10.5 million into what it called community investment through outside organizations, with applications due that August. Lamboy listed some of those that were funded: Cambridge Health Alliance, the Eliot Center, the Joint Committee for Children’s Health Care and For Kids Only among them, across public health, child care, education and food programs. Housing groups including Housing Families, La Comunidad and the Malden Warming Center received just over $2 million.
Each nonprofit was paid half its award up front. All of the programs had to end by September 30, and the city’s consultant, which Lamboy described only as a nationally known accounting firm, is now going through final reports. A group that did not use its full award loses the balance. A group that did not spend even its advance has to pay the city back.
One program fell well short. The Everett Youth Initiative Council line started at $1 million, Lamboy said, but the organizers could not identify enough eligible students and are expected to reach about $100,000.
Rent relief went the other way. Action for Boston Community Development distributed about $600,000 to renters between 2022 and 2024. City planning staff then took over the rental and mortgage assistance program and, Lamboy said, have paid out more than $1.44 million, “and they’re still going.”
The senior meal program, the most visible use of the money, ended on August 31. The city said in July that it had served about 400 residents a week.
Who is watching the books
City bid records show two consulting procurements tied to the program. One, issued in the fall of 2023, sought a firm to manage the nonprofit grants under a contract that could be renewed through October 2026. The other, in April 2024, sought financial and compliance staffing for ARPA and for federal disaster reimbursements. Three firms responded, and the purchasing office issued a notice of intent to award that contract to Anser Advisory Consulting of Boston for $80,480. The dashboard’s financial compliance line is far larger, at just over $1 million, and Lamboy did not name the firm now reviewing the nonprofits’ books.
What happens on December 31
Asked what becomes of money that is not spent, Lamboy was direct. “If we don’t spend every dollar, which we’re trying to do, it would go back to the federal government,” she said. She told Pietrantonio she has “multiple contingency plans” for absorbing whatever the nonprofits return, all of them inside the building projects the city controls.
The committee sent the small business resolution back to its sponsors without a recommendation. Lamboy promised Capone a written answer on whether the grants are taxable income to the businesses that received them.
The city’s ARPA page, with the dashboard and the program’s earlier presentations, is at cityofeverett.com/everett-arpa. Our full transcript of the October 26 meeting includes the committee session.
