By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Ellis County Commission approved $5.7 million in grants in CARES Act funding at a special meeting Thursday, but chose to deviate from the recommendations made by a committee established to review applications.
The commissioners balked at the $915,538 recommended for businesses, with Commissioner Dustin Roths saying some of the numbers submitted were "pie in the sky."
The commissioners ultimately directed County Administrator J.D. Cox to reduce allocations to certain business who received the largest recommendations. This was done so $200,000 could be allocated to the county for a new ambulance.
The county has applied for a FEMA grant to fund a portion of the ambulance, but even if the grant is approved, it would still need another $70,000 for the purchase.
The ambulance was budgeted for purchase next year.
"The way I look at it is that the money is available here today," Commissioner Dean Haselhorst said. "If we can fund an ambulance, why should we ask the taxpayers to fund a full ambulance if we can get it funded here today?"
Roths said, "I think where the government went wrong in this and opened a Pandora's box in this for Doug and his whole committee was they threw in this idea of lost revenue.
"When they did that, it became less about COVID-19 and protecting people in these businesses and it became an accounting issue for a lot of these small businesses to try to recoup what they think they might have lost when they were shut down. They probably shouldn't have been shut down out here in my opinion."
Hess Clinic
They also directed Cox to increase the award for Hess Clinic from $2,700 to $40,000. The clinic requested assistance to fund personal protective equipment, money to construct a drive-through area at the clinic and money for COVID testing equipment.
Of Hess' more than $115,000 request, the commissioner opted not to fund a request for hazard pay for employees, noting county fire and EMS workers had not received hazard pay during the pandemic.
The commission suggested cutting business funding across the board who had received the maximum funding request in their categories. Most of the businesses were retailers, restaurants or hotels and were recommended to receive funds from $20,000 to $50,000 each.
Short time frame for decisions
Doug Williams, director of Grow Hays, was the chairman of the subcommittee on for-profit funding. The subcommittee received 50 applications for more than $5 million and was asked by Cox to pair that down to $1 million in recommendations. That ultimately was cut to $715,538 in lieu of the allocation to the county for the ambulance.
Williams said the subcommittee focused on retailers, hotels and restaurants, because they believed those were the businesses that were hardest hit by the pandemic.
Williams said the applications did not indicate if businesses had received any other COVID assistance, including Paycheck Protection Program loans.
The subcommittee created a formula to allocate hotels based on the number of rooms, basically recommending $500 per room, which could be used for PPE or enhanced cleaning efforts.
"I am comfortable with the decisions our committee made, and I'm comfortable with the decisions that the think tank made given the task at hand, the time frame to do it, as well as the information we had. We tried to do the best we could," Williams said.
The Ellis CARES Committee had a short time frame to review the applications. The county hopes to send the applications to the state Friday. They are due Monday.
All money for the program has to be spent by the end of the year.
Any business or agency receiving funding will be asked to sign a memorandum of understanding saying they will spend the funds within the parameters of the CARES Act. This will include a stipulation that fund recipients must be current on their taxes.
No money for oil
The subcommittee did not recommend any oil companies receive funding, which raised concerns among the commissioners.
Williams said five of the seven applications from oil companies can from the same person. The subcommittee members believed the oil commodities had been affected by other factors than COVID-19. He also noted PPE was not needed in the oil fields.
Sarah Wasinger, director of The Chamber in Hays, said all of the oil company requests also were to fund payroll, which could have been covered under PPP loans.
Haselhorst said, "You talk about motels being off 80 percent. I can tell you for a fact that the oil field business was off 100 percent. We take zero consideration about the oil field in Ellis County. That is what funds this county. That is what funds this city. ... Some of these asks are off the wall."
Roths said he was concerned the committee recommended funding for Midland Marketing, but not oil companies.
For-profit businesses
Roths had questions about equity in the for-profit funding recommendations.
"If they had requested over $25,000, the award recommendation was $25,000, and it didn't have any barring on their economic impact to the community. For instance, the Hallmark store and the men's clothing store gets the same funding as the mall."
He continued, "The last thing I thought last night was do I really want to reward, I guess you could call it, greed over people that were being reasonable? ... People who were saying if I could get $6,000 or $7,000 I could really get through this and be fine.
"Some of these asks on the for-profits were almost laughable to me."
Cox acknowledged the program was not perfect.
"The main goal is not that, the equitable part of it. That strikes completely opposite of what we believe in. The main goal is to inject money immediately into the economy," he said.
Roths owns two business in Hays. He said he did not apply for any funding under the program.
He said the program was not what America and free markets are about.
"The problem that came from this for you guys is who stuck their hand out and said they wanted money as opposed to what you guys thought was fair," he said.
He added later in the meeting, "I imagine being a county commissioner of Ellis County might have cost me $75,000 in grant funding."
Non-profits
Sandy Jacobs, director of the Heartland Foundation, chaired the subcommittee on non-profits. She said about half of the requests were to cover lost revenue from fundraisers that the non-profits could not have because of COVID-19.
Roths praised the non-profits for asking for what they needed and suggested they should have asked for more funding.
Commissioners recommended the non-profit group identify more needs in case the state denies any requests.
Roths questioned the need to allocate the Wild West Fest $75,000. Jacobs said WWF was unable to be held this year. Without the funding, it will be unable to move forward in subsequent years.
Jacobs said the event adds to the quality of life for Ellis County residents and brings in business to the community.
SEE RELATED STORY: Group recommends $5.7M CARES funding to Ellis County Commission