Part of the steel frame of the Francis Scott Key Bridge sits on top of the container ship Dali after the bridge collapsed in Baltimore on March 26, 2024.A robust investment in public infrastructure has too often been an American unicorn—desirable yet elusive. Even our vaunted highway system wallowed as an aspirational blueprint for a dozen years before President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
Shortly after the President signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, our team at Bloomberg Philanthropies canvassed small towns across the country to hear directly from their leaders. In focus groups from Alexandria, La., to Greenville, Miss., to Santa Fe, N.M., to Scranton, Penn., local officials repeatedly said they didn’t believe these dollars could get to them. They worried putting precious time and energy into deciphering complex federal applications would yield nothing.
Across the board, the program’s results have been just as promising. Through training with experts, peer sessions for local officials, and pro-bono bootcamps, the Local Infrastructure Hub has guided hundreds of successful applications: In the Reconnecting Communities awards out in March, bootcamp participants averaged grant sizes of $95 per resident, three times the $31 per resident for non-participating city winners.
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