Gift Requests Swamp Grand Forks ‘Angel’

If “Angel” met every current application for her $2,000 gift, she’d need to pay $22.5 million. And those requests are far from ending.

Since local government officials had given the anonymous benefactor an estimate of $12 million to $14 million in requests between Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, the gap between projections and reality is already large.

It’s so large the Angel Fund operation has temporarily been put on hold as the anonymous benefactor weighs her options.

Howard Swanson, the Grand Forks city attorney who has administered the fund, said he didn’t know when decisions would be made by “Angel,” so named by Grand Forks and East Grand Forks Mayors Pat Owens and Lynn Stauss for her significant money and morale contributions to the city.

He said options presented to “Angel” include one in which applicants would receive a lesser amount.

“We knew what was intended. We have not taken the indignant approach and asked her for more money,” he said.

The size of the requests hit home when Tuesday’s mail included 6,000 applications.

That brought the application total to more than 11,000, meaning it would take $22.5 million to satisfy all requests.

And more applications are certain to come if the rules aren’t changed. The mandatory evacuation area south of 17th Avenue South still has not been called to receive applications. Plus, many residents in other sections of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks have been too busy to apply on their designated days and planned to do it later because they were told they had 45 days.