Representatives from cities and departments throughout Umatilla County sit socially distanced, and wearing masks, to discuss how Umatilla County will spend its funding from the federal coronavirus relief package at the Pendleton Convention Center on July 1, 2020.

PENDLETON — City and county officials are forming a workgroup to iron out how to disperse a portion of the more than $4 million in federal reimbursements that will be made available from the federal coronavirus relief package for economic relief throughout Umatilla County.

Representatives from the county and each of its 12 incorporated cities made the decision at a meeting in the Pendleton Convention Center that a committee was needed to focus on developing a uniform, coordinated grant program that prioritizes how the funds will be used.

“There’s a problem with the potential for duplication and we want to get maximum utilization out of the money that’s coming to us,” Umatilla County Commissioner George Murdock said to the group. “Our major challenge is to make sure we work together as a county and as communities so we aren’t sending any of that money somewhere else.”

The funding is coming after a lengthy back-and-forth between local and state officials and among state legislators, who ultimately settled on a reimbursement model that sets base funding allocations for all cities and counties with additional funding provided on a per capita basis.

Umatilla County, which is slated to receive approximately $2.3 million, has committed at least half of those funds for economic relief.

Pendleton and Hermiston are expected to receive over $500,000 in reimbursements each, while seven of the county’s smallest cities are only slated to receive the base funding of $50,000, or $25,000 for cities with a population under 750. Umatilla ($220,000), Milton-Freewater ($210,000), and Stanfield ($66,000) will also receive additional federal dollars.

The funding can be used for direct expenditures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as changing points of entry for public buildings, rearranging office spaces to account for social distancing or other associated personnel costs. But the funding can also be steered toward businesses that have been negatively impacted by the virus-related restrictions and shutdowns.

Representatives in attendance Wednesday, July 1, agreed that a portion of the funding their communities are receiving needs to be directed that way, but left a number of questions unanswered for what the best way to do that would be.

Among the things settled on at the meeting was the idea of rewarding the funds through a coordinated business grant program that each community would earmark a portion of its funds.

“My opinion is we don’t want to make this any more complicated than we have to because, at least in my mind, the sooner we can spread economic stimulus to the community the better off we are,” said Robert Pahl, chief financial officer for the county. “So I think it has to be a simple process.”

This would allow for officials to evaluate where the funds are most needed while keeping the application process consistent so that businesses from each community are being asked to provide the same information and submit their applications in the same manner.

Umatilla County Economic Development Coordinator Gail Nelson will head the workgroup that will feature representatives from each city to ensure that businesses in each community actually receive the funding that a particular community sets aside for the program.

What remains to be seen is what criteria businesses will have to meet in order to be eligible and how the selection process will ultimately be executed.

Some officials highlighted that whether it was from city or county grant programs that were rewarded thousands of dollars in the weeks following the start of the pandemic or other government programs that have become available, many businesses in the area have already received some type of economic assistance.

“I don’t want to get into a process where one business gets two or three grants and another business gets none,” said Pendleton Mayor John Turner.

But officials also acknowledged that in many cases that initial assistance already wasn’t enough to begin with or has already run out.

Hermiston City Manager Byron Smith highlighted that there’s also the opportunity for governments to funnel some funds to nonprofit organizations that may be able to offer individual assistance for rent and utility payments.

Questions were also raised about whether each business would receive equal amounts of assistance, how in-home businesses and sole proprietors would apply, and whether assistance would be awarded on a by-need basis or through a lottery process.

A timeline wasn’t provided for when the process will be finalized and when assistance will actually begin being dispersed, but Umatilla County and its cities are at least moving the ball forward in trying to develop a fair and efficient framework.

“It’s certainly not going to be enough to make everybody whole,” Murdock said of the federal reimbursements. “But $2.5 to $3 million is still going to make a difference.”