The D.C. Council voted Tuesday to spend roughly $25 million on repairs to the city’s aging stock of public housing, and to set aside more money at the end of this fiscal year to do the same.

The money was included in the city’s $15.5 billion budget for the coming year, and was approved after a protracted standoff with D.C. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt over the source of the funds—the reserves of Events D.C., the city’s sports and convention authority.

DeWitt said that $47 million in excess reserves had to go to other purposes, including the city’s cash reserves. But on Tuesday Council Chairman Phil Mendelson used a creative legislative tactic to reclaim the money and split it between public housing repairs and upgrades to the city’s 911 dispatch system.

The Council also voted to spend an additional $1 million on repairs to public housing in Ward 1 from a deferred tax abatement for The Line hotel, and to set aside 50 percent of Events D.C.’s excess revenue in the current fiscal year to fund the repair work. The fiscal year ends in September.

“We can’t have a millions of excess tax dollars sitting idly by while some of our neighbors live with mold, pests, and disrepair in public housing,” said Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen.

The money is a drop in the bucket of what the D.C. Housing Authority, which manages the city’s public housing, says it needs. While what the Council allocated will help repair and upgrade 400 units of housing, the authority says that it has 2,600 units in “extremely urgent” condition. That means residents could be forced out of them.

All told, there are roughly 8,000 units of public housing in 56 properties. Much of D.C.’s public housing buildings are more than 50 years old.

Earlier this year, Tyrone Garrett, the director of the Housing Authority, put the price tag for all the necessary repairs at $2.2 billion over 17 years. He blamed the current crisis in part on the federal government’s disinvestment in public housing, and redoubled his call for the city to provide him with “desperately needed resources.”

“This year’s budget underscores the severity of the physical conditions DCHA is facing and the District’s sincere commitment to ensure low-income families in D.C. continue to receive affordable housing assistance,” Garrett said in a statement.

The Council initially balked at offering the Housing Authority any money for repairs, saying it wanted it better plan on what the problems are and what plans exist to address them. But Mendelson ultimately decided an investment was worth making.

“There’s uncertainty whether the Housing Authority knows how much they actually need or if they have a plan to do all the repairs,” he said. “But we’re talking an order of magnitude of a billion or $2 billion, so putting $25 million aside for repairs clearly is needed and will make a difference and doesn’t risk that we’re throwing too much money in.”

The other half of the $47 million the Council claimed will go towards eliminating an 80-cent-per-night tax on hotel stays that funds upgrades to the city’s 911 dispatch system. But getting rid of that tax drew opposition from Mayor Muriel Bowser, who instead wanted that money put into the city’s cash reserves.

“Instead of filling our cash reserves to 60 days which would help us borrow money at better rates for key investments, [Mendelson] decided not to tax hotel visitors 80 cents a night,” tweeted John Falcicchio, Bowser’s chief of staff. “Why?”

Other than fighting to get the money from Events D.C., Mendelson also used Tuesday’s final budget bill to send a message to the sports and convention authority—which manages the Washington Convention Center, Nationals Park, and the Sports and Entertainment Arena—that he was looking to rein in its spending.

Mendelson inserted a provision into the budget bill that prohibits Events D.C. from spending any money to buy RFK Stadium or entice the Washington Redskins back to the city, as Bowser has been trying to do. There was an unsuccessful attempt Tuesday to strip the provision from the bill.

“Having an entity be able to make a purchase without any public debate is something I can’t support,” said Allen.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.