ASHTABULA — Three years ago the Obama Administration rolled out its $831 billion stimulus plan to help lift the nation out of recession by putting Americans back to work.

A sliver of the money from that plan, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), trickled down to Ashtabula County agencies, school districts and “shovel-ready” projects. Overall, Ohio received about $8.6 billion, and it would appear that about $75 million of that was committed to the county. The largest single project,  $28.7 million for repairing and paving Interstate 90 between Kingsville and Conneaut, is just getting started. But in most other areas of investment, the money has been spent and the recipients are left with the question of how to replace it in order to continue the programming it funded and keep its employees working.

When the ARRA was announced three years ago, there were 42,200 Ashtabula County residents employed. In December 2011, there were 42,300 employed (Ohio Labor Market Information). The unemployment rate did fall, but only because the number of residents who were counted as unemployed decreased.

“It was a good shot in the arm, but it needs to continue,” said John Rubesich, superintendent of the Ashtabula County Educational Service Center (ESC). “It was one-time money.”

The ESC received more than $1.5 million, which it funneled into local school districts. Superintendents turned to the fund as a way to keep teachers in the classrooms when state funding dried up, he said.

Individual districts also received grants of ARRA funds — Ashtabula Area City Schools received more than $7 million, but it was not “new” money in the sense it allowed the districts hire additional teachers.

“The ARRA money comes from the federal government and the state basic aid was reduced by the same amount ... the net result was no increase to the district,” said Superintendent Joseph Donatone.

Worse, when the ARRA money ended, the state did not replace the aid it had supplanted. Money from another federal program, the Education Jobs Bill, served as stopgap funding, but that also is being withdrawn.

“The bottom line is that next year we will eliminate 47 positions because the ARRA money is gone, the (Jobs Bill) money is gone and state basic aid (remains decreased),” Donatone said.

The money also went into infrastructure. There was a $500,000 waterline project along Route 534,

a $350,000 bridge replacement on Austinburg Road, a $600,000 widening project on Route 45 at Austinburg and the $2.7 million paving of Route 20 in Ashtabula Township and North Kingsville.

About 70 households and businesses in Austinburg Township will eventually be able to thank ARRA every time they flush their toilets. Two ARRA grants totaling $1.4 million helped bring down the cost of the mandated sanitary sewer project in the township. Larry Meaney, director of the Ashtabula County Department of Environmental Services, said the county got the money because the project was “shovel ready” and mandated by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Without the ARRA money, the assessments for property owners would have been astronomical. The ARRA money is expected to bring the per-foot assessment well below the $43 figure commissioners originally certified.

The funding came with a caveat of regulatory oversight and reporting, especially as it relates to the use of American-made materials on the project.

“The good news is you get the money, the bad news is the various levels of red tape and string you have to go through,” Meaney said.

He compares the regulatory environment to “playing Monopoly and changing the rules as you go around the board.” Meaney said the government was so anxious to put the money into the economy and create jobs, the rules had to be written as the projects progressed.

For the Austinburg project, which has not been accepted by the county, the latest wrinkle is an independent review that raised questions about proper documentation in materials sourcing. That is an issue the contractor will have to work out, hopefully sooner than later, with the auditors. CT Consultants, which was  hired by the county to handle the project, is working on the issue. Those close to the project say it has come down to documenting the source of nuts and bolts.

The documentation complaint is heard elsewhere, as well.

“This was four times more detailed ... than what any of our other grants were,” said Jim Noyes, executive director of the Ashtabula Metropolitan Housing Authority. The authority received $1.1 million in ARRA money to rehabilitate the Bonniewood Estates Apartments — with American-made products.

“Do you know that you can’t buy a fluorescent light that’s American-made?” Noyes said.

Only one U.S. company makes a toilet, and when that firm was flooded with orders from other ARRA-funded projects, it was forced to purchase toilets from a subsidiary in Mexico to meet the demand. That shut down a $4 million project when the outsourcing was discovered.

To meet the demands on the Bonniewood job, Noyes said he had to shift money for those parts of the rehabilitation to other funding sources.

The mandate to use American-sourced materials on these projects was in keeping with the program’s job-creation focus, an aspect voters will be hearing a great deal about in the coming months. According to recovery.gov, the number of stimulus jobs nationwide in the last quarter of 2011 was just 8,200.

In Ashtabula County, none of the projects was a strong job creator in itself, and when the work ended, so did the job. Meaney points out, however, that the Austinburg sanitary sewer project has the potential for driving economic development in that part of the county as it opens up commercial and retail possibilities on the affected properties.

Noyes said he had projected that the rehab work would employ about 14 workers, but the government report on the project shows 2.2 jobs created. Whatever the number, the jobs ended when the ARRA money ran out.

Ashtabula County Community Action Agency is facing the same issue as its $7.3 million home weatherization grant winds down. Only $45,000 of the money remains to be spent.

“We were able to do over 1,100 homes in Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula counties,” said Executive Director Judith Barris. The agency hired and trained about a dozen new workers.

“We will not be able to maintain them,” Barris said.

The federal funding that would otherwise keep weatherization workers on the agency’s payroll has been cut; worse, Ohio did not receive any federal funding at all “because we used the ARRA money,” Barris said. What little money the agency will receive for weatherization will come from the state, she said.

That means “a few” of the workers will have to be laid off. On the positive side, Barris said those workers gained new skills that can be used in the private sector.

The agency also received $1 million to start an Early Head Start program in the county. That created eight new positions, which have been retained after the ARRA money ran out. Barris said other federal funding has stepped in and funded the program, which has 72 students and a waiting list.

Another ARRA grant, for $183,169, provided cost-of-living pay adjustments for Head Start employees. The money was also used to shore up fringe benefits, mainly increased health insurance costs.

In terms of jobs created, the nod must go to Nordic Air’s contract with the U.S. Navy to produce 80 heating and cooling units under ARRA funding. The $2.9 million contract generated a peak of 22 jobs in the last quarter of 2010 and 11 jobs in the first quarter of 2011.

Even Kingsville Public Library got a crumb from this pie. Director Mariana Branch said the $8,747 that came through the Every Citizen Online project allowed the library to purchase 11 laptop computers. They are used in a monthly computer skills class that is still ongoing. Branch said she invoices the sub-recipient every month after a class is held.

“(The accounting) is not much different than a typical grant,” she said. “It’s been pretty simple overall. The initial paperwork did take a little time.”

Branch said the jobs benefit of the program is that students who take the free classes will become more computer savvy, which can help them when they go looking for or apply for a job.

Janice Switzer, director of the Ashtabula County Department of Community Services and Planning, said she feels that while ARRA’s job impact on the county was minimal, it did “provide an opportunity for local contractors to keep people employed. And it allowed us to do some infrastructure improvements that there was no way they would have been done (if not for the ARRA money). ... Mainly, it kept the local contractors working, at least part of the time.”