With a potential $1.9 million remaining unspent from their federal coronavirus aid funding, a Cypress city councilman has asked the city to investigate the possibility of using those funds to provide a new grant program for local institutions hard hitby the virus.
Council member Jon Peat inquired about the progress of their efforts to create a grant program for the city’s 30 nonprofit organizations.
“I’m just wondering if it is possible that we could consider using the surplus money to help our community,” said Peat.
Acknowledging that the nonprofit grant program is slated to be back before the Council in the spring of 2021, Peat wondered if that “would be permissible uses” of the funding.
Although Peat’s request came two meetings ago, City Manager Peter Grant got a thumbs up on Monday after he gave the Council a sneak peek at what he and the staff were envisioning as a COVID 2.0 small enterprise rescue fund. Peat has been pushing to expand or enhance the current grant program to the city’s nonprofits, which in the past have received mostly in-kind services.
Grant initially wondered aloud about the city’s ability to administer such a program with current staffing, noting that there was a very low bar for entry to the earlier COVID program.
There are no administrative or funding connections to the purported federal aid surplus so “it could certainly be used” to fund small business grants like those distributed earlier this year.
After Peat’s request “to allow for the potential for all 30 nonprofits to ask for some level of assistance to cover costs or lost revenue,” Grant noted that, earlier in the year, the council “very successfully’ put $1.2 million in federal funds back into the community via grants.
“So that is a model we could certainly replicate,” he said.
Grant quickly outlined the parameters of a new grant program, seeking input before the holidays as the staff put the final touches on the program before it is presumably ratified in January.
Of the available $1.9 million in remaining funds, Grant said $750,000 will be set aside for $5000 grants to the 150 small businesses in the city.
An additional $500,000 would be set aside to, “for the lack of a better term,” assist the smaller enterprises that “survive the pandemic.”
Another $350,000 would be dedicated to food security to either assisting existing food distribution programs or allow Cypress restaurants to participate by providing vouchers of some sort.
“The idea there would be that, at $15 per meal, $350,000 could provide up to 25,000 meals,” said Grant.
Finally, he said, the remaining $300,000 would be set aside to allow the city’s nonprofit grant application program. “The details are still being worked out,” he said.
Incidentally, the Cypress small business grant program administered earlier this year has been nominated for an award by the Orange County Business Association.
