We are awaiting an update on a
Where's the Money investigation.
Tonight, Charlotte City Council's
expected to take action in response to
our Nate Morbito's reporting they're
preparing to approve more than $230,000
in Pandemic money the city should
have given an area nonprofit in 2020.
Bureaucrats and elected leaders told us
they only found out about this oversight
after Nate discovered the city's mistake.
He's joining us now in the studio.
So Nate, how do you come
across these kinds of errors?
Because it's always a curious thing
when you see your reporting you
were you are revealing so much.
It must be a sort of a process
to get to that right?
Always is. It starts with the tip
and that's where this one started.
And the city says this all comes down
to a math error by city staff that
resulted in three other organizations
securing small business grants instead of
University City partners, which we found.
Actually scored higher than
those three on its application.
It took us double checking the city's
math for the mistake to come to light.
This is especially important because the
university area is the second largest
employment hub in all of Charlotte.
We're talking about $230,000 in
critical small business help that
would have gone a long way during
the first year of the pandemic.
And it's important to maintain trust,
to do the right thing and to maintain equity.
I ran on public accountability and and
and I'm consistently fighting for that.
So that's important to me.
That's important to all of council
and we're going to make this right.
You just heard from City Council
member Renee Perkins Johnson.
She represents that part of town and
sits on University City Partners board
after we told her about the mistake.
She pledged to take action.
City Council meets at 5:00 o'clock tonight.
We expect a decision probably around 7730. So
the interesting thing about this too,
is university city partners didn't know.
They just thought they didn't get,
they just didn't receive the money because
other applications scored higher than theirs.
I mean, so here's here's how this works.
Someone tipped me off there were
some concerns about this program,
which is a grant program to
support small businesses.
So I say, well, how, how did the city
decide giving out who gets what right?
Yeah, they said it all comes down
to these application scores.
So this is like an application and every
piece of the application has a number on it,
and they're two different people looking
over every one of these applications
and they're giving each a score.
Then they average their score.
So I did the math.
I come up with every score for every
applicant and realize that university,
city partners should have received money.
They scored higher than three
other nonprofits.
And so I pushed back to the city.
And the city says, oh, you know what?
It looks like we made a mistake.
We need to change our process moving
forward to make sure that multiple people
beyond just two are looking over this.
And as I said, I mean,
it could start with a tip
about a separate story.
That's what happened in this case.
And I'm still looking into that original tip,
but through this,
I just double checked the city's
work and that's what we do.
So often it's kind of boring.
It seems boring,
but it takes weeks at a time
just to come up with this.
And hopefully tonight everything
will be good to help those small
businesses in the University City area
well, And you being so meticulous
and methodical about all this,
it really does make a difference
because I mean $230,000 for a group
like University City Partners.
That's a huge deal.
Yeah. Let me tell you, too.
They just got a new leader
at that organization. And.
And this is a nonprofit that's trying
to decide how it can best help the
small businesses in this community.
And now going to have about a quarter,
$1,000,000 to be able to.
Right. And to do so much good in
the community. That's incredible.
Yeah. We love that you do this.
Nate, thank you so much for doing what you
call the boring stuff because you really,
really affect change.
And we appreciate it.
Thank you. Right now,
you can check out Nate's entire report.
I encourage you to do so
on this financial era.
It's on our website and
inside of our mobile app.
You can find it right on our homepage.
And when we do get an
update from City Council,
that article will also be updated
as those developments come in.