Mayor Gives Details, Timetable On Aid For Tuscaloosa Bars

TUSCALOOSA, AL. — Mayor Walt Maddox and Tuscaloosa bar owners are expected to have additional conversations Monday concerning the ongoing shutdown of establishments with lounge liquor licenses, but a plan has already been placed on the agenda for a City Council committee meeting this week that outlines a proposed aid package.

The plan would see the City Council appropriate $400,000 from Restart Tuscaloosa, budgeted for "Experience Economy," to then be distributed to the 29 businesses impacted by the executive order, which closed all bars inside the city limits and prohibited bar service in restaurants for 14 days beginning Monday, Aug. 24.

Maddox will present the plan to the council's Finance Committee at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

If passed by the council, the funds would be distributed no later than Sept. 15.

The initial directive closing bars was issued after the University of Alabama reported 531 cumulative positive COVID-19 cases at the Tuscaloosa campus on Monday — a number that has since ballooned by 481 cases during the testing period of Aug. 25-27. The latest addition to local numbers brought the Tuscaloosa campus total to more than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases since classes began on Aug. 19

In terms of oversight, Maddox's plan calls for utilizing the city's Small Business Relief Fund (SBRF) to handle the review and distribution of funds, while the City Council will appoint an ex-officio member to the fund's review committee.

The proposal also mentioned the possibility of rotating a member from the district where impacted bars and restaurants are located.

On the upcoming agenda, Maddox laid out his reasonings for the recommendation, which have been voiced in past meetings and focus primarily on the obvious negative economic impact felt by the businesses forced to closed.

"Bars and restaurants fall under the Experience Economy and it is critical not to have dozens of empty store fronts when the City emerges from the pandemic," Maddox wrote.

The mayor also pointed to information collected by the city's finance team that provided a comparison to revenue gathered over the same 14-day period in August 2019 to project the financial losses facing the impacted businesses, which came out to nearly $350,000.

Maddox went on praise the "due diligence and expediency" of the city's SBRF as the mechanism through which the relief money would be doled out.

The SBRF was also responsible for distributing $1 million over seven phases to qualifying small businesses beginning in June — an effort that concluded on Aug. 18 with $84,279 dispersed in the final round.

"We had a productive discussion with bar and restaurant owners this morning," city spokesman Richard Rush told Patch Friday. "And we have another meeting scheduled Monday morning to continue our work together to move toward reopening in a way that benefits everyone involved as much as possible."