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GREENSBORO — Two days after the Greensboro City Council aired its confusion over funding for a proposed downtown hotel, Guilford County commissioners realized they too made key mistakes regarding the project.

Both boards believe they didn’t get enough information or time to review the requests vying to take advantage of millions in preferential federal financing.

In the case of the commissioners, they voted last month to put the Ole Asheboro Hotel project ahead of five other qualifying projects, giving it nearly all of the county’s first allocation of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act bonds.

Now, at least five of those commissioners say they didn’t realize the other projects would have to wait for funding — and endure more scrutiny — because of their move.

“I was just laughing the other day that the Greensboro City Council could have approved something without realizing they’d done it,” Commissioner Linda Shaw said.

“But I guess here we are in the same boat. I guess you’d have to say shame on us,” she said. “It’s not the staff’s fault, and the county manager always makes sure we’re informed. We just should have been more careful.”

The recovery zone facility bonds were created under the 2009 federal stimulus act. The program allows private developers to borrow at a low interest rate.

The bonds are funded and paid for privately — local taxpayers are not liable. But the construction projects still have to meet financial muster with a state commission before the bonds can be issued.

Both Guilford County and Greensboro got an allocation under the program — $19 million for Greensboro and $9.8 million for the county — that allowed them to approve projects that could take advantage of the preferential financing.

The hotel project, backed by a local group of investors, would be a 200-room, eight-story luxury hotel on the corner of South Elm Street and February One Place.

Commissioners voted last month to approve $46.3 million worth of projects. They included the hotel, an east Greensboro shopping plaza, a Summerfield veterinary hospital and two solar energy projects.

Commissioners approved the projects in order of priority, with the proposed hotel at the top.

Since the hotel’s $9 million request used up nearly all of the county’s allocation, the other projects might have to wait for the next round of federal money. Those other projects will face much greater scrutiny than the hotel and others in the first round, according to guidelines released by the state Wednesday.

Additional projects will be approved by a state commission and have to prove their positive effect on the community, including private investment and job creation.

Projects in this initial allocation, including the hotel, do not have to meet those standards.

It is possible the hotel still might not get approved for the special financing.

A new study of the hotel’s viability reported earlier this week that projected revenue would not be enough to cover the debt, confirming fears some critics have been voicing for months.

That kind of scrutiny has been lacking for projects in this initial round, which had to be submitted before a Dec. 15 deadline.

For instance, the county’s bond authority vetted the projects and prioritized them, with virtually no guidelines.

“We were given the applications,” said Bradley Peete , a member of that authority. “But that was just information from the developers themselves. We didn’t have the time or any way of independently verifying any of that.”

Peete said the board tried to rank the projects based on how many jobs they would create.

While some would create temporary construction jobs, Peete said none of the projects seemed likely to create long-term full-time jobs.

County Attorney Mark Payne said the authority got few guidelines for earmarking the money because few were provided by the state and federal government.

“No one gave us any criteria of how we would even evaluate various different applicants,” Payne said. “There were broad qualifying criteria, but beyond that nothing. And the fewer rules you have, the more confusion.”

Commissioners Shaw, Paul Gibson, Mike Winstead, Kirk Perkins and Billy Yow said that confusion led them to vote before they had all the relevant information — even though Payne repeatedly explained the process at the Dec. 10 meeting.

“We didn’t ask all the questions we should have,” said Gibson . “I thought I understood what we were voting for, but clearly I didn’t. There clearly should have been more discussion.”

Perkins said the commissioners were eager to approve something that would inject money into the local economy. The bonds seemed like a way to do that, Perkins said, but the commissioners might not have been as careful in approving them as they would have been with local tax money.

“I will say that I certainly didn’t understand,” Winstead said. “If we all completely understood what was going on, there would have been much more discussion of it, much more scrutiny.”

Yow said he believes the details were glossed over for one reason: Chairman Melvin “Skip” Alston was a broker on the hotel deal.

Alston was not yet part of the project at the time of the Dec. 10 meeting — he said he signed on Dec. 21 — but he abstained from the vote.

When asked why he stepped out of the meeting room before the vote, Alston later said he was in negotiations to become a broker and wanted to avoid a conflict of interest.

Several commissioners said Alston should have revealed that before the vote.

“It takes a minimum amount of effort to be honest with people,” Yow said. “He should have just said to us this was his project, he was involved. I know that would have meant people paid more attention. There would have been more questions. It wouldn’t have just gone through unnoticed like this.”

Alston said that, beyond signing the resolution as chairman of the commissioners to approve the bonds, he has stayed clear of the matter to prevent a conflict.

He refused to disclose how much money he could make from the $54 million project.

“That’s none of your business, frankly,” Alston said. “I don’t ask how much you make.”

The deadline for projects wishing to benefit from the next round of federal bond allocations is Feb. 15. There is no word yet on when those bonds might be awarded.

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com