City to offer second round of CARES Act applications

CLOVIS — Mayor Mike Morris said on Monday the city of Clovis will offer a second round of CARES Act applications and cap the first round’s grants at $100,000.

The decision was made in hopes of helping businesses whose situation may have changed after the state’s “shelter in place” public health order was issued on Nov. 13, Morris said.

But some area business owners are not happy with the decisions, complaining the city changed its own rules after applications had been submitted and processed.

“It’s hard to compare businesses, but it feels like we’re getting punished for having more employees … for the money that it’s taken to survive this,” said Leal’s Mexican Food Restaurant Owner Laura Leal.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public health orders have closed multiple local businesses and limited others as a result of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed 1,400 New Mexico residents.

The state awarded Clovis $4.2 million in CARES Act funding to help offset the business’ losses.

“We went very hard after the $4.2 million that we’re able to use to create these business grants, and the purpose of that and the hope when we do that is we would help as many businesses in Clovis as absolutely possible,” Morris said during the Monday press conference.

Officials said last week that 81 applications were deemed eligible after the first round and a task force was prepared to provide the city with 29 completed applications requesting a combined $1 million.

Those first-round numbers varied between $500 and $490,000, city commissioners were told. Morris said that between 10 to 12 businesses applied for more than $100,000.

“With the 81 applications that were processed by the Chamber and the Small Business Development Center and the task force who sent those recommendations over to the city, that got right to using the (entire) $4.2 million,” Morris said noting that those were rough figures. “But when we went and applied the cap on the very few businesses that were over 100,000 then that gave us over $1 million of the funding that would still be available to offer out in the second round.”

The mayor said he made the decision to cap funding and open a second round of applications.

Leal was among business owners who have publicly criticized the city’s actions.

“I think it would have been fairer if they had done a percentage, because in other words everyone who qualified up to $100,000 they’re going to be taken care of 100%,” she said.

“I imagine that anyone who qualified for over $100,000, they’re all going to be hurt and most of those are hotels and restaurants probably. The most of my expense that I qualified for was the labor that we put out into the community. For our labor market there I have 70 employees and we’re all at risk of losing our jobs right now.”

Leal said she already had to close one of her two Clovis restaurants because of the pandemic and has put the Leal’s building on Prince Street up for sale. She said she feels singled out by the city because of her involvement with the Clovis-Curry County Chamber of Commerce.

“I spoke to the mayor and I was wanting to get an answer as to why the $100,000 cap is what they came up with, and what he told me was pretty much that because I’m the incoming president for the Chamber of Commerce that this wasn’t going to look good,” she said.

The Chamber, under a $60,000 contract with the city, handled the application and review process for the CARES Act funding. Chamber Director Ernie Kos said the task force consisted of herself, Sandra Taylor-Sawyer, Kent Carruthers, Chase Gentry, Rachel Forrester, Pat Crawford and Paul Ellis. She said Leal was not involved and had no input in the process.

Leal said she was “dumbfounded” by the mayor’s comment.

“I’m not saying I’m ungrateful or unthankful for what is coming, but I’m saying that the way they went about it was very wrong,” she said. “They changed the rules at the last minute and that coming out of the mayor’s mouth made me realize that there’s a lot more behind this.”

Morris did not have a comment on what Leal said, but agreed that “the narrative that the rules were changed or that the cap was applied, that’s true; we did apply a cap late in this process.”

But Morris said city officials never told the task force it should communicate to the applicants that they would be funded at 100% of their requests.

Clovis hotel owner Danny Jariwala joined Leal in criticizing the city’s decision to cap funding.

“Hotel businesses, restaurant businesses, retail businesses, a barbershop, all of those different businesses have different kinds of operating expenses,” Jariwala said. He added that he supports the idea of a second round for businesses who may not have applied to the first round, but he is concerned that the cap may not have been the fairest way to make it happen.

“I don’t think it’s a crime to be a larger operating expense business. We are part of the community as much as the smaller businesses,” Jariwala said.

Jariwala said he is concerned a second round of applications will be rushed since the city has to award the grant money before year’s end.

“None of the businesses have received a single dollar yet, and we are two months (into the first round of applications),” he said, adding that the second round of applications ends Dec. 4. “Would there be enough time left for the businesses that are applying in the second round to go through the same vetting process we went through in the first round to receive those funds?”

Morris said the issue was not easy to resolve. And he said if no additional businesses apply for funding the first-round process may result in every approved expense being funded.

Information on how to apply can be found at clovisnm.org/cares. Applications will be accepted until 5 p.m. Dec. 4.