The ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It is a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden to support communities in their economic and health response to COVID-19. Like many federal programs, they send block grants to the states and allow the states to use that money to best help that particular state.

This Bristol skate park is a project that cannot be outsourced. It will provide jobs for local businesses to provide the material and the labor, which is a small local economic shot in the arm. It will also improve a well-used recreation spot for our local youth that gets them outside and away, for a time, from their electronic devices, providing exercise and social interaction skills. It may help keep them out of trouble as well.

Could our Founding Fathers have envisioned this as a role for our federal government? No, they probably could not. At the time of our Founding Fathers, they could not have envisioned anything more than a muzzle loader for the writing of the 2nd Amendment. They could not have envisioned that women, people of color, or even white men who did not own property “All men are created equal” found in our Declaration of Independence. The term “men” in that phrase meant, white, male, landowners. Everyone else was excluded.

Our founding fathers were smart. They came up with a very loosely worded constitution with the ability to add amendments in the future because they knew they could not predict what the world would look like in the distant future and wanted a document that was structured enough to give a basis for democracy, but fluid enough to change with the times.

We don’t live in 1776 anymore.

Peter Ryersbach

Bristol