It has been a very busy week. I’m not sure where to begin.
I’ve been working on the story that ran this week for quite some time. I’ve never put more hours of work into a story. I spent hours and hours calling and talking to city officials to find out what their cities did with their portions of the CARES Act funding.
It appears these cities took funds from the CARES Act and used the majority of them to pay budgeted public safety salaries. Some cities did give money back, but some didn’t. This is where the story gets personal for me.
I have two friends who own two small businesses in Austin. They are two of my best friends and they mean the world to me. When they asked the City of Austin for help, they didn’t get any help. They didn’t get any help at any other level of government either. They are not the only businesses who didn’t get any help. They tried asking for assistance three times from the city and were denied all three times.
One of my neighbors is a business owner. He didn’t get any help from any of the available grants at any level of government. He had to get a standard business loan to stay open. What are struggling businesses who didn’t get any help supposed to do?
Cities such as Austin and Mankato received a lot of money from the CARES Act that was supposed to be used to help people and struggling small businesses. I thought that was the point. Instead, many cities used the money to pay their operating expenses. It appears cities did this in a roundabout way to avoid regulations and guidelines.
The City of Austin received two million dollars. They could have given their 94 reported small businesses $10,000 each and not have spent half of their city’s CRF funds. They chose not to and so did Mankato. And if it weren’t for Gail Schmidt asking questions at the city council meetings and my writing about it, the City of New Richland wouldn’t have done anything to help our own struggling small businesses.
It was a painful thing to make all these calls. Call after call I heard the same stories. The city is struggling and businesses are doing fine. I was told over and over that they got enough help already and that they didn’t need or want anymore help. Well, I’m here to tell you that businesses are not doing fine. We are hurting.
I talk to a lot of people. I make a lot of phone calls for the Star Eagle. Some for stories, and a lot more to try and sell ads for the paper. If it weren’t for the support of those advertisers and our subscribers, we wouldn’t be able to keep the doors open here. I felt I owed it to these business owners to find out why they didn’t get help from their local government.
I spend a lot of time talking to small business owners. I made hundreds of calls selling ads this month for our paper. Businesses are struggling and I hear about it because a lot simply don’t have money to spend on advertising. Luckily we cover a large area and enough businesses support us. And that’s because you, our readers, support your local businesses. None of us want to see our local hardware, bakery or cafe go under for any reason. But if they do go out of business because they didn’t get the help they could have from their local cities, then whose fault is that?
If I’m wrong about this whole mess, I am sorry, but I feel I owe it to my community to stand up and say something.
With all of that said, I have a lot to be thankful for and I would like to end my last column of the year by saying what some of those things are:
Thank you (the readers) so much for giving me the opportunity to work for a town I love, doing work that means so much to me. Words cannot describe the level of gratitude I feel for every person who walks through the doors at the Star Eagle, whether it be to say something nice or to try and keep us in line. Thank you for every phone call about a newspaper arriving late, for the handwritten comments we so often receive (Positive notes, of course!). Thank you to the people I see walking down the street who say, “Nice article, keep up the good work.” And the lady who last week said, “Thanks for keeping the city council honest.” Thank you to the gentleman who has come in each of the last two years and overpaid on his subscription nearly ten-fold. Thank you to Sara Jo at City Hall for calling me every time she knows about something happening in town that she knows I’ll want in the paper. Thank you to those who don’t like their picture being taken after I show up because Sara Jo called, but allow me to put them in the paper anyway. Thank you to all the businesses in town that are still here. We don’t ever want to see you go away. And last of all, if I haven’t said this enough, thank you to our dedicated readers. This may seem like a lot , but after the week I have had, after the month, after this year, I want our readers to know they are not taken for granted.
From all of us at the Star Eagle, happy holidays and merry Christmas.