SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – Seminole County officials say they were just 30,000 residents short of qualifying for a federal grant that could have brought millions of dollars into the county to help small businesses bring in personal protection equipment.
"We simply didn't get a grant that was only for counties that are 500,000 people or more," said Alan Harris, Seminole County's Emergency Manager. "Which doesn't make sense at all since the poorer counties are generally the smaller counties."
The topic of discussion is coming up among businesses in Seminole County after Orange County launched a program to distribute 1 million masks and 200,000 hand sanitizers to 20,000 businesses in its area. According to Orange County officials, county leaders used $1.5 million of $243 million in funding that was granted through the federal CARES Act.
[RELATED: Here’s how Orange County small businesses can get free masks, hand sanitizer]
Harris explained the funding issue at the virtual county commission meeting Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s an interesting algorithm the federal government used,” he explained to commissioners. “All the monies for communities less than 500,000 went to the state of Florida and the state of Florida has not identified what algorithm they are going to use to pass the money to us and how they are going to do that.”
In the meantime, Seminole County’s Economic Development Team has put together a list of suppliers and vendors for business owners struggling to get supplies, like downtown Sanford salon owner Ken Ewing. In order to open up his salon, he is required to disinfect his station in between clients and has been calling stores every day asking if they have more cleaning supplies in stock.
"I call every morning," Ewing said. "It's been a challenge."
Christina Hollerbach owns Hollerbach’s German Restaurant in downtown Sanford. She was able to pair up with a local distillery to get hand sanitizer, however, she had to ask her own employees to bring in empty soap bottles to fill them.
“When we went to Walmart to try to buy them, they would only allow one per customer and, though we said it’s for a restaurant, that we weren’t reselling them, they were reluctant to change their policy,” Hollerbach said.
She said many of the downtown businesses are helping each other with supplies and believes Seminole County is doing all it can to help the community.
“There has to be a cutoff and sometimes you fall on the wrong side of it,” Hollerbach said. “But I do believe our county officials and city officials have our best (interests) at heart and they will find other ways to try to help their constituents.”
If you want to contact the Economic Development team for resources for small businesses, click here.
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