By Pepper Fisher
SEQUIM – The Sequim City Council this week approved a second round of grants to small businesses hit hard by the pandemic, and the level of funding, nearly half a million dollars this year, seems remarkable for a town of only 7000 people.
The City Council has made it a priority to prop up those hit hardest this year by dipping into the City’s rainy day fund. We asked City Finance Manager Sue Hagener to talk about how they’ve been able to pull it off.
“And the way that we’re able to do that is because we have rainy day funds that we’ve been saving over the course of the years, during boom times, if you will. We were very strategically and specifically saving it for a rainy day. And as Charlie Bush, our City Manager, would say, ‘If this isn’t a rainy day, I don’t know what it is’. And so we were able to capitalize on use of our fund balances, which are quite healthy, and our rainy day fund and to be able to support our small businesses.”
Hagener points out that small businesses are an enormous part of the City’s tax revenue base, which is one of the reasons the coffers are in such good shape in the first place.
76 grants have been awarded so far. They range from $1500 to $10,000, with the majority being $5000 or more.
The decision of who gets the grants is made by the Executive Board of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce. The City of Sequim cuts the check, but it’s the Chamber that takes in the grant applications and rates them using a point system based on how hard the business has been hit, their impact on the local economy, and other factors.
Board member Jim Stoffer has seen first-hand how these grants are affecting lives, and the resulting domino effect throughout the community.
“If our businesses are healthy, then our schools can also be healthy, and then the whole of the community can be healthy. That’s so important for everybody to be working together. Those families of our students, a lot of these businesses employ those parents, so that they have a paycheck that they can give back through this holiday season. It’s so vital for the community.”
The grants are for locally-owned businesses only. No box stores, chain restaurants or things like that. The funds awarded stay in the community.
“It’s very, very rewarding work. We have a phrase that says, ‘For the Love of Sequim’. And that’s, I think, what it’s all about right there, is helping each other for the greater good.”