Greeley requested a piece of the Weld Business Relief funding pie. Weld County Commissioners said no.
By Kelly Ragan
At least $2.3 million of federal relief for COVID-19 will soon be available to most Weld County businesses — as long as they aren’t in Greeley.
Greeley business owners – despite being Weld County taxpayers – likely won’t be able to apply.
Mayor John Gates and Jaime Henning, president of the Greeley Area Chamber of Commerce, asked the county to allocate nearly $400,000 of the fund to Greeley businesses, but the county denied the request.
In a letter to the city, the Board of Weld County Commissioners explained its decision.
“The board created the Weld Business Relief Fund to ensure businesses in unincorporated Weld would be guaranteed an opportunity for relief and assistance,” according to the letter. “The offer was made to all Weld County municipalities, including Greeley, to participate with the Weld Business Relief Fund program by contributing, at a minimum, 15% of their municipal allocation.”
That 15% refers to the money divvied out by the federal CARES Act. The idea is that if Weld municipalities put money toward the fund, they’ll have access to a bigger pool of money (hence the $2.3 million).
But the CARES Act funding was intended to help cover COVID-19 related costs local governments took on as a result of the pandemic. Greeley officials argued that while some municipalities didn’t need much funding at all to help absorb the COVID-19 impact, Greeley, a city with more than 100,000, needed the money.
“We’re the population center,” said Ben Snow, director of economic health and housing in Greeley, in an interview. “We have the hospitals, we have the businesses with hot spots and outbreaks. We have to spend more time and resources on direct costs.”
As a whole, Weld County got a total of $27.8 million from the CARES Act. The county got to keep about $13.2 million. The rest, about $14.6 million, was given out to municipalities within the county according to their population. Greeley got about $4.9 million, or 34% of that distributed fund, since it makes up about 34% of Weld’s population.
The county got a $13.2 million slice of the pie since it runs the county health department, the human services department, job services, the county jail, and the countywide Office of Emergency Management, all of which handle COVID-19 fallout, according to a news release.
As it stands, city officials don’t yet know whether that will be enough to cover the costs incurred by COVID-19. If the expenses exceed that $4.9 million, it’s possible the city won’t be reimbursed and will have to eat the cost.
That essentially means Weld commissioners want Greeley to risk a budget shortfall, Snow said, and put the 15 percent in their Weld Business Relief Fund to help local businesses. To Snow, it seems reasonable for the county to set aside proportional figures to help Greeley businesses.
“There are only 125 businesses in the unincorporated part of the county,” Snow said. “There is no way you’re going to allocate $2.3 million to those businesses.”
The NoCo Optimist reached out to county commissioners for comment but did not hear back before publication time.
There is no appeals process for the county’s decision.
But, according to Snow, there could be a chance to regroup in September when Greeley will have a more accurate view of its budget and the impact COVID-19 has had on its budget.
Greeley businesses will still have access to relief funding through the Greeley Area Recovery Fund, a public-private partnership established early on in the pandemic.
“We love Weld County’s heart for businesses,” Snow said. “…we just want to make sure Greeley businesses aren’t getting shorted here because of the formula (the county) devised.”
To learn more
To learn more about the Greeley Area Recovery Fund, go to https://greeleyarearecoveryfund.com/.