Nearly 10 months after the flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene, there is still little resolution for the local businesses who were affected by the storm.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has money available for homeowners who suffered storm damage, as well as municipalities that did.
The problem is that FEMA does not have any comparable relief program for small-business owners, who instead must deal with a crazy quilt of state and federal sources of money, mostly in the form of loans, rather than grants.
If you are a business owner who lost your inventory and had your property damaged by flooding, you are going to think twice before you take out a second mortgage on your home or business.
But that is exactly what is happening to small businesses in Windham County.
FEMA points them to the federal Small Business Administration, which, in turn, puts up what many believe are unreasonable obstacles to getting loans that owners wouldn't be able to afford to pay even if they received them.
So many businesses in Vermont are small, sole proprietorships, meaning that their business income and expenses are legally inseparable from their personal finances. And property insurance doesn't cover flood losses, as many Vermonters found out last summer.
Entrepreneurs stuggle under the best of business climates. They simply lack the resources to recover from disasters like Irene, and for any number of good reasons ranging from this region's long-term economic health to simple humanity, their needs deserve to be addressed.
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Last week, small-business owners' anger and frustration with the relief process dominated the first of a series of public meetings sponsored by the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development's Department of Economic, Housing, and Community Development (DEHCD).
Even more frustrating for Windham County was learning that it just missed a cutoff to share in a new pool of $21.6 million of disaster-relief funding administered by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the same agency that administers the federal Community Development Block Grant program.
The needs in Windham County are easy to spot. Unfortunately, according to HUD's policies and calculations, 80 percent of that $21.6 million will go to Washington and Windsor counties, with the other 12 counties divvying up the remaining 20 percent.
The explanations for this split given by state and federal officials at the June 5 hearing in Brattleboro were not convincing.
Never mind that the money is a proverbial drop in the bucket, or that this money comes with major strings attached, such as permanent deed restrictions or the requirement to maintain flood insurance.
The feeling at the meeting was that there is too little help available, and what there is available is too difficult to obtain.
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We know that 2011 saw an unprecedented number of natural disasters in the United States.
We know that funding for federal disaster relief has been steadily whittled away.
But in a state that FEMA is holding up as a model for how to recover from a disaster, it will take more than volunteers, teamwork, and goodwill to bring back businesses hit hard by Irene.
It's going to take money, and a lot more of it, to finish the job.