The town that turned its stimulus money down

Montana towns and cities have been allocated a total of $86.4 million in local COVID-19 relief from the American Rescue Plan Act. The mayor of Ismay, the 17-person town that once renamed itself Joe, says his community doesn’t need it.


ISMAY — Tens of millions of dollars of COVID-19 relief money allocated by the federal government under the March American Rescue Plan Act has flowed to Montana towns and cities, funding intended to patch up pandemic-strained budgets and support water and sewer infrastructure investments.

One eastern Montana town, where the 2020 census tallied 17 residents, has responded with a polite no thank you.

“We don’t really need it for anything, so it might as well go to someone who can use it,” longtime Ismay Mayor Gene Nemitz said in an interview this week.

Ismay, the smallest incorporated municipality in the state, was slated to receive $4,853.35 from the local government relief program, which has allocated much larger sums to more populous cities: $15.9 million to Billings, population 117,000, for example, and $2.1 million to Miles City, which has about 8,400 residents. In all, Montana municipalities have been allocated $86.4 million.

Read more: https://montanafreepress.org/2021/08/19/mt-town-declines-arpa-stimulus/