Schenectady utilizing ARPA funds to address food insecurity

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SCHENECTADY — Schenectady is targeting food insecurity by funding a pair of community food organizations with federal funds.

The City Council approved $950,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding in August 2022 to Schenectady Inner City Ministries (SiCM) and the Schenectady Foundation to support healthy and equitable food access for all city residents.

When the money was initially allocated, each organization was required to provide the council with budgets and supporting documentation for their proposals, which both groups have now done.

At the council’s Finance Committee meeting on Monday evening, the committee set a March 27 vote for the full council authorizing both programs, with SiCM set to receive $350,000 and the Schenectady Foundation to receive $600,000 to establish a Healthy and Equitable Food Access Council.

SiCM’s grant will support urban farming, bolster food pantry services and expand food distribution programs.

Under the terms of the agreement, the money will be allocated by 2024 and must be spent by the organization by the end of 2026.

“Three years of funding, which is what we’re proposing, would get us a significant amount of time to get the project going and it would also work on the long-term sustainability of the project,” Rev. Amaury Tañón-Santos, executive director of SiCM, told the council on Monday.

City Council President Marion Porterfield said that SiCM has a proven track record of delivering value to the city through the services they provide to residents.

“SiCM has already shown their worth in terms of the community because they make sure that people get fed and they have various other programs,” she said on Tuesday. “In addition to the food program, there’s a medical program that they have. So I think that’s a very wise investment.”

The ARPA funding will allow SiCM to hire three staff members, including a mobile pantry coordinator, a farming coordinator and a driver.

The program will run out of 14 locations throughout the city, addressing food insecurity in eight city neighborhoods, including a mobile pantry site at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and an urban farm at 333 Hulett St.

The Schenectady Foundation’s $600,000 grant will establish a Healthy and Equitable Food Access Council, which will bring key food partners together to address food insecurity in the city.

The project objective is to gather groups, including emergency food providers, food producers, distributors, farmers and health officials, to examine the local food system, advocate for policy changes and to launch programs to boost food security for community residents.

“This is a very collaborative community and that is one of the reasons why we think we can do work differently here than many other cities and many other communities,” Schenectady Foundation Executive Director Robert Carreau told the council on Monday.

“Given that we’re seeing widespread issues, particularly visible since COVID, of food insecurity, we can respond in an emergency manner, which we have been. We also believe that there’s a way to kind of take it up a notch and be more thoughtful and thinking in the long-term about how do we fix the system.”

The Schenectady Foundation has contributed $1.7 million to establish the food council.

“I’m hopeful that it’s going to bring the agencies that work in these areas together and bring efficiencies that will enable more people to be helped,” City Councilman John Polimeni said of the program. “It should make it a more efficient process and as dollars are actually decreasing, it’s important that we become more efficient.”

The Schenectady Foundation proposal notes that the council could include the expansion of community gardens, increased nutrition education in schools and improved access to healthy food at local retail shops.

“This is bringing together organizations that are already doing the work and it will allow them to do it in a more comprehensive way because they’re working together as opposed to having everything siloed and each person working independently,” Porterfield said on Tuesday. “So the food council brings together all the people that are already doing work in terms of food security and gets them all in the same room talking. In my opinion it brings a much smoother program with people working together and everyone knowing what the other person is doing.”

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