The first $500,000 of the $2 million or more Grays Harbor County plans to provide in small business grants with federal CARES Act relief money was approved at the Board of County Commissioners morning session Tuesday.

The grants of up to $10,000 will be available to small businesses located in the county with 50 or fewer employees that suffered losses due to COVID-19-related closures.

A draft grant application form approved by the Board of County Commissioners, drafted initially by Commissioner Wes Cormier and adjusted over the past few weeks with input from commissioners Randy Ross and Vickie Raines and the county’s legal team, shows that to be eligible for the grants the business owner must agree to all of the following:

The business is located in Grays Harbor County and has been in place since Jan. 1, 2020

The business employs a maximum of 50 full-time staff; business with a maximum of 25 full-time staff will receive eligibility preference

The business will provide IRS Form W-9 and any other pertinent financial information to the county for grant processing

The application itself is very simple, as grant applications go, two pages with just a few questions to answer and information about required documentation. The application will be available as a fillable PDF on the county’s web page, www.co.grays-harbor.wa.us.

The grant applications will be processed by the county’s .09 Advisory Committee, which is comprised of seven members: two from each commissioner district and one representative from the Port of Grays Harbor. This committee was established to review applications for county Distressed Area Capital Improvement Funds that encourage economic development.

The application review will put applicants into one of three tiers. Tier 1 business, closed during Phase 1 of the governor’s Stay Home Stay Healthy order, will get priority consideration. Businesses that were partially open during the order will be placed in Tier 2, and businesses that remained open but still incurred COVID-19 financial losses will be placed in Tier 3.

The advisory board will have the ability to take into consideration other factors, which could include whether the applicant has received funds from other sources, whether they may be available for CARES Act small business grants provided by a city, or if the business is in an unincorporated part of the county, among other considerations still being finalized.

The advisory board will then forward its recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners, who can approve or deny the grants. The grant contracts and funding will go through a county department, so no outside subcontract, and the expenses that would accompany such a contract, will be needed. At a Monday special meeting, commissioners discussed the possibility of using fairgrounds staff, experienced in such grant work, for this stage of the process, but a specific department had not been identified as of Tuesday morning.

The county must come up with the initial $500,000 on its own and be reimbursed by CARES Act funding later. Where exactly the initial funds will come from in the county budget wasn’t specified Monday, but Ross said it’s important to get the ball rolling on the grants now.

Once the initial $500,000 is distributed, “I’d like to make sure we keep priming the pump so as soon as we disperse the $500,000 we can immediately come back with another round of funding and see how much we can give out in any two to four week period,” said Ross. He and Raines clarified that additional rounds of funding would be available when CARES Act funds, administered by the state Department of Commerce, have reimbursed the first $500,000.

The total amount of business grant funding is up in the air and depends on demand from local businesses and other expenses on the county level that could be covered by the CARES Act funds available to the county, more than $4 million total. Cormier maintains he believes all of that amount should be used for small business grants.

Ross provided a draft breakdown of expenses that could be covered with CARES Act funds, including preparations for a potential fall COVID-19 case surge, to include plans for additional quarantine and isolation facilities and testing sites if needed. Commissioners continue working with Public Health, the county incident management team, Grays Harbor Emergency Management, and county departments to see what the funds could be used for.