Dayton, Ohio, was desperate for COVID aid to help with basic services. Now the city finds itself awash in funds, and it's looking at creative ways to spend some of the largesse.

Transcript

SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:

Back in March, Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. It was a windfall for state and local governments pinched by the pandemic, and some of them are still trying to figure out how best to spend that money, as NPR's Tamara Keith reports.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Back in February, Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley was one of the loudest voices lobbying for state and local governments to get money in the big COVID relief bill. She said her city desperately needed the funds.

NAN WHALEY: So if we don't get any federal money, no fire class.

KEITH: There was no money to train new firefighters. That put Zack Wyrick's life on hold.

ZACK WYRICK: You know, I knew it was going to take a while. I didn't expect it to take this long, though.

KEITH: The 28-year-old applied to the fire department before the pandemic. And then he waited and waited, working as a restaurant manager in the meantime.

WYRICK: You know, I took three promotions at work, and I almost forgot all about it until they called back. And I'm like, oh, yeah - like, I'm ready. Let's do this. This - I've been waiting so long.

KEITH: It's barely light out as Wyrick and 17 other recruits run up flights of stairs, carrying fire hose.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Wyrick.

KEITH: This academy got going months late while the city waited to see if it would get money in the COVID relief bill. The money came through, but in the end, Dayton didn't end up having to use it because the local economy bounced back more quickly than expected, says Mayor Whaley.

WHALEY: We saw a huge uptick, frankly, in corporate taxes coming back really heavily. And so that gave us the opportunity to kind of breathe and then figure out, like, OK, how can we spend this to make the most impact in Dayton?

KEITH: Dayton isn't alone in this. Cities and states all over the country found their budgets fared better than expected. I met up with Whaley in a working-class neighborhood known as Westwood, where there are a lot of boarded-up houses, abandoned years ago.

WHALEY: You can see - right? - where we've taken some houses down.

KEITH: Whaley, who is a Democrat and is running for Ohio governor, stands in front of a house vacant so long the vines have taken over. Dayton will get $138 million in COVID aid to spend over the next several years. The city is thinking about using some of the money to demolish abandoned houses.

WHALEY: We just have never had this opportunity before, and I think that's what's really exciting about it. And we want to get it right.

AMAHA SELLASSIE: I think it's a great opportunity. You know, like, we haven't had this much of resources come into the community in - I don't know how long.

KEITH: Amaha Sellassie is a community activist. He says this COVID money could begin to reverse decades of economic disparity.

SELLASSIE: There's, like, strips of houses, where it's, like, oh, my God. It looked like a bomb was dropped. You know what I mean? And so, on a deeper level, I think it's, like, we've accepted the unacceptable.

KEITH: There's an argument, though, that Republicans made back when the relief bill was first debated that not all of that money was urgently needed. That case will likely get louder ahead of next year's congressional elections, especially with cities and states now using the money for long-deferred wish list items. But Gene Sperling, the White House official overseeing the funds, doesn't see it that way.

GENE SPERLING: The fact they have that time and flexibility is a feature, not a bug, of the American Rescue Plan.

KEITH: He says Democrats learned their lesson back in 2009, responding to the financial crisis. Back then, their big stimulus package was all about quick spending on so-called shovel-ready projects. But when the recovery stagnated, there wasn't anything there for struggling local governments. Sperling says this time they created flexibility in case of future bumps in the road. But this bill was so big, there are other programs that may determine whether voters ultimately see it as a giant slush fund paid for by taxpayers or a success. There were direct relief checks, aid to businesses and money for schools.

At Louise Troy Elementary School in Dayton, it's easy to see the COVID dollars at work. On one side of the classroom, teacher Jessica Lomax is helping a group of third graders learn to read.

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JESSICA LOMAX: What if everybody did that? Do you guys remember this story?

KEITH: While on the other side, Michelle Isaacs teaches math to another small group.

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MICHELLE ISAACS: Thank you, Tyler. Tyler's on it.

KEITH: Forty-five minutes in, the kids grab their supply bins and quietly swap to the other side of the classroom. The Dayton public schools hired nearly 90 teachers over the summer to put two teachers in each first, second and third grade class. The idea is to give these kids more individual attention in hopes of making up for lost time. Here's Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli.

ELIZABETH LOLLI: And while some people may think that's a little extravagant, when you really think about the idea that I can teach 10 students at the same time that my partner teacher's teaching 10 students, think about how I - how much I can see with 10 as opposed to 20.

KEITH: Lolli says there's enough funding to continue this experiment for two years. And if it works, she'd like to find a way to keep it going, part of a transformation Democrats would like to be able to tout as they run for reelection.

Tamara Keith, NPR News, Dayton.

(SOUNDBITE OF LUSINE'S "TURN BACK") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.