BLOOMFIELD — A pair of business owners from Bernie questioned the Stoddard County Commission about the process used to determine who receives Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act money.
Waylon Owens, owner of the Bernie Fitness Center, told the commission during its regular weekly meeting Monday morning that he submitted an application in November and didn’t learn until recently that his application was missing a signature.
“We turned in our application in the middle of November. That’s the last I heard of it,” Owens said. “I called Mr. (Frank) Killian on Nov. 30 at 12:17 p.m. I did talk to Mr. Killian that day, and he said he would call me back. We did not hear back from him. I didn’t hear anything else for several weeks.”
Owens said he started noticing what people were receiving in CARES Act funds in the newspaper.
“I started calling Miss (Associate Commissioner Carol) Jarrell. That was the week before Christmas,” Owens said. “Miss Jarrell, after a few days, tried to get to the bottom of it and told me that my application was nowhere to be found. I could not find my application. That went on for about a week or so until this past Friday when I was told my application was missing a signature. So I’m here to see what we can do about getting some of my money back.”
Presiding Commissioner Danny Talkington said the paperwork was not lost and the commissioners received it Dec. 7. He said because there was no signature or date and the deadline to submit CARES Act requests had passed, he considered it an invalid request and “there’s no need to go any further with it and we set it aside.”
Talkington said no funds remained in the COVID-19 funding account, and the $3,405,212 has been paid out.
The state of Missouri gave Stoddard County $3,405,212 of CARES Act money to distribute to small businesses and government and community entities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have about $7.1 million in requests for $3.4 million,” Talkington said. “So not everybody got everything they asked for and some didn’t get anything.”
Owens said, “I understand that and I understand we may have missed the signature. I mean, I understand that it is entirely possible. But how did people — we turned in our application in mid-November — how did people that turned in their application after us, how did they get paid? And if we did miss a signature, how is it that we weren’t notified that we missed a signature?”
Owens reiterated that Killian did not return his call as he said he would.
“So, in my thinking, even if I was missing a signature, we could have started the process of remedying that that day,” Owens said. “That was still before the deadline and before some people even submitted their applications, and they still got paid. So I guess at this point, I’m just here to air a grievance because I understand there’s no more money, but if there is any more money, I think it’s fair to say that I feel like I should be at the top of the list.”
Chris Huggins, an owner of Main Street Restaurant in Bernie, said he didn’t learn about the CARES Act funds until the day before the Nov. 30 deadline.
“We got everything filled out like we should, made a few phone calls and were able to get it here on time before the deadline,” Huggins said. “But when we hear that other businesses that filled their paperwork out after the deadline, I think, (and) got paid, and then that multiple businesses had received two checks that exceeded our amount that we requested, and what we requested wasn’t even all that we could have requested. … And so I’m just here to see what’s going on. What’s the process here?”
Talkington explained the process of how requests were handled.
“Sometimes it went through the (Dexter Chamber of Commerce) and Frank would pick it up there. Sometimes it was sent directly to Frank. Some times he picked them up here,” Talkington said. “He takes it and goes through the paperwork, looks at the receipts, makes sure documentation is there, and he calculates the total amount. Most of the time people have a recap sheet in there. And he fills out a request and brings it to us and we go through it to make sure to see if we (don’t have) questions and then we would process the payment.”
Changing the rules
Shane Taylor, an owner of Farm First Crop Insurance LLC in Essex, voiced concerns about the rule changes on what items were eligible for reimbursement and which ones were not.
“Who makes the rules?” Taylor asked. “For instance, the paperwork I saw, there’s no mortgage payments. None of that was allowed. Later that changed. Then I saw the insurance companies were paid, and I saw you came back and said insurance companies should not be paid. I mean, where does all this come from?”
Talkington said the initial guidelines came from the federal government and they included only one sentence about helping small businesses.
“The grants that were being made to municipalities, police departments and ambulance districts, we had very specific guidelines, but the businesses we had one short sentence,” Talkington said. “We finally started getting some guidelines that came out in September and then again in October with revisions as to what could be included. That’s why those things changed. From the very beginning, we had to guess what they were going to allow.”
CARES Act
reimbursements
Talkington said the commission agreed to award CARES Act funds to four businesses in a special meeting on Thursday. Those businesses were the first four businesses on a list denoting those who had requested funds but had not received any funds.
“We had money we had allocated and they didn’t spend all that money, so we had an extra ($23,143.06),” Talkington said.
Talkington said the Essex Fire Department and Bootheel Counseling Services did not spend as much money as expected. Bootheel Counseling received $8,689.97 in CARES Act funds, approximately $10,000 less than what it asked.
The following businesses received CARES Act funds:
• Lucas Florist, $3,800.42;
• Main Street Restaurant, $13,624.85;
• Stoddard County Senior Citizens Agency, $5,118.87; and
• Tips and Toes, $598.92.
Johnsongrass tax
Stoddard County resident James Hensley asked the commissioners during the Dec. 28 meeting about how the townships’ johnsongrass tax began and if it could be discontinued.
“The way that it was started is there had to be a revenue statute, which 100 people in the county had to request be done, and then it goes to the Secretary of Agriculture, who then appoints a board,” Talkington told Hensley at Monday’s meeting. “I didn’t see any provision for how to get rid of it at this point. I’ve only answered part of your question as to how it got started, but I don’t know how to get it to stop.”
Talkington said he would need to contact the Secretary of State’s office to learn how to take the tax off the books.
Hensley addressed his concerns about deer carcasses, as well as beer cans and bottles, lying on the sides of roads.
“Coming out here this morning from my driveway to town, there were five dead deer lying on the road,” Hensley said. “We as a society drive down the road (and say) ‘well look, there’s a dead deer.’ We just keep going. Nothing’s thought about it. … MoDOT is always broke. They’re not going to pick them up. And I’m not gonna pick them up, I don’t think. … It’s an eyesore and we as a community should be ashamed of ourselves for letting that happen.”
Talkington said MoDOT is responsible for cleanup of dead animals along roads it maintains, “and I’ve not seen them picking up animals either.”
Hensley asked the commissioners if they could draft a letter telling MoDOT people are concerned about it and those animals need to be picked up. Talkington said the commissioners could do that.
Concerning the beer cans and bottles, Talkington said groups of people adopt certain sections of roads and are responsible for picking up trash.
Hensley said not all of those groups follow through.