July 17, 2020
For my very first radio piece, I conducted the interviews, wrote the script and recorded my own voiceover. The piece ran on Georgia Public Broadcasting station, 88.5 FM, on July 17.
View the webpage for the related story here. Listen to the audio in the video below.
Read the script below:
HOST: COVID-19 continues to batter Georgia businesses and communities. Meanwhile, federal aid earmarked to provide cities some relief is in the hands of state and county governments. Mayors in Fulton and DeKalb counties say they want to do more to help but they can’t due to a struggle with county officials for a portion of federal relief funds. GPB’s Ada Wood reports.
ADA WOOD: A community of immigrants have planted their roots along the eight mile stretch of Buford highway in the city of Doraville in DeKalb county.
The immigrants are largely Asian and Latinx. And many of them are business people. Lily Pabian, executive director of We Love BuHi, a community support organization within the corridor, says Asian businesses lost money very early in the pandemic when some people unfairly laid blame for spreading the virus on Asians.
PABIAN: And some of those biases and some of those generalizations started happening. They saw a dip, about 40% of business as early as January.
Mayor Joseph Geierman of Doraville is afraid for the future of what makes Buford Highway so unique.
GEIERMAN: I'm very concerned about when this finally does burn out, what is our Buford highway corridor going to look like? … Are we going to see a sea of empty storefronts?
Pabian says to prevent that, DeKalb County should put aid money directly in the hands of mayors along the Buford Highway corridor.
PABIAN: In this game, it’s really about getting to the doorsteps of need because any other way is ineffective. And quite frankly, fluff.
But so far DeKalb County hasn’t reimbursed the City of Doraville for any COVID-19 expenses. Geierman says the county hasn’t provided any direct aid yet, either. In Chamblee, and in the Fulton County city of East Point, officials are still waiting for direct aid, too.
Overall, Georgia has received more than $8 billion in federal assistance to address the pandemic. Of that, just over half is part of a fund set aside to assist county and local governments.
Every city and county in the state can apply to that fund. Except for cities in the four metro counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb, aside from the City of Atlanta.
Because those counties have so many people, they get to decide where their money gets spent. And the cities in those metro counties must now ask county leadership for a share of the money.
Mayors in Cobb and Gwinnett say that process is working out. But in Fulton and DeKalb, it’s a different story. Fulton County has already spent most of their allotment. DeKalb County is spending some of the money on county wide projects.
CLARKSON: But in the meantime, I guess we submit invoices and then on a hope and a prayer that they’ll ever even reimburse us.
That’s Mayor R. Eric Clarkson of the city of Chamblee in DeKalb County. Clarkson says if DeKalb cities received aid money, that could help stabilize struggling businesses, or even create hazard pay for frontline workers.
East Point Mayor Deana Ingraham in Fulton emphasized that the cities’ populations were the basis on which the U.S. Treasury calculated the county’s per-capita allotment. She and her fellow mayors say they want to see cities get an “equitable” share of the relief funds.
INGRAHAM: So billions of dollars have been allocated by the federal government and have gone out and the cities are still crying: “Cities are essential.”
Meanwhile Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts has been authorized to write a letter to Governor Kemp telling him Fulton County will not be disbursing any more money to the cities within its borders.
Unused aid money is set to expire at the end of the year.
For GPB News, I’m Ada Wood in Atlanta.
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