On May 19, 2020, the Godfrey Village Trustees Ben Allen, Virginia Woulfe-Beile, Karen McAtee, Nathan Schrumpf, Mark Stewart, and Jeff Weber unanimously approved the plan for a Small Business Community Gift Card program commonly known as the “Godfrey Stimulus program”.
The program is funded with sales tax monies from the business district fund. The goal was simple, to provide a lift to the businesses who wished to participate within the business district, in the form of $10 for $20 certificates for services or dining. “We have supported this idea from square one along with the other Trustees!” stated Woulfe-Beile, Schrumpf and mayoral candidate Stewart. “This program has helped a lot of businesses when they were down and maybe even close to out”, the three said. “But we want to be fair and see every business have the same opportunity.”
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The avenue of the funding stems from the Godfrey Business District collects a 1% sales tax from all businesses within the district boundaries. The funds can be used for economic development within the district only, therefore not all businesses within the village were invited to participate. Woulfe-Beile, Schrumpf and Stewart want to extend the invitation for this program to all Village businesses and will vote to allocate funding to include all those businesses that want to participate. In addition, the three Trustees want to pursue expanding the Godfrey Business District to include all Village businesses so when a need arises outside the current district boundaries, the village will be able to use the funds without disqualification.
“We are proud to support the gift card program and glad to see many Village businesses getting a nice boost from it! Now it’s time to level the playing field for all businesses!”
Mark Stewart
Nathan Schrumpf
Virginia Woulfe-Beile
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