The Board of Morgan County Commissioners heard a report from the latest Board of Health meeting at their short regular meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 11.

A report was given on how schools are interacting with the Northeast Colorado Health Department.

“It really sounds like school districts are making their own calls with guidance from the health department,” Laura Teague, Fort Morgan representative on the NCHD Board of Health and former Morgan County commissioner, said. “They had some citizens’ complaints that the health department was requiring the wearing of masks and requiring school districts to do certain things, and I really think that wasn’t the case. I think school districts are really working on this collaboratively with each other and with the health department.”

No decisions were made at the meeting, but Teague said there could be a slight uptick in testing to weed out any potential cases.

Morgan County Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Kristin Clifford-Basil spoke to the commissioners Tuesday morning about the state of the Reopen Safe, Reopen Strong business relief grant program that would give money to businesses to cover COVID-19-related expenses. The funds for the program come from the CARES Act, a stimulus package meant to alleviate the economic impact of COVID-19.

“Friday, Aug. 7, was the deadline for the applicants to turn in the grant applications for the CARES relief grant that the county is doing,” Clifford-Basil said. “I anticipate maybe 35 to submit to you on Thursday.”

Morgan County’s grant program was available to every business in the county, and there were additionally city programs in both Fort Morgan and Brush. Businesses could apply to both their municipal grant program and the county’s program.

“Brush received 10, and I believe the City of Fort Morgan received close to 30. And I have a meeting with Brush tomorrow morning to go over the overlapping applicants and to help them review theirs, and I will be talking to the City of Fort Morgan today about doing the same with them,” Clifford-Basil said.

Applications were opened on July 7 and closed last Friday for both the municipal and county programs.