US: Small town prints wooden currency to boost COVID-19 relief

Tucked away under lock and key in a former railroad depot turned small-town museum in the US state of Washington, a wooden printing press cranked back to life to mint currency after nearly 90 dormant years.

The end product: $25 wooden bills bearing the town's name - Tenino - with the words "COVID Relief" superimposed on the image of a bat and the Latin phrase "Habemus autem sub potestate" (We have it under control) printed in cursive.

With the coronavirus pandemic plunging the United States into a recession, decimating small businesses and causing job losses across the country, some local governments are looking for innovative ways to help residents weather the storm.

For Tenino, the answer was the revival of the local currency that had bolstered the town's economy in 1931 in the wake of the Great Depression.

Tenino, a town of less than 2,000 people located about 60 miles (95km) southwest of Seattle, started printing the local banknotes in April, five weeks into Washington state's lockdown.

Anyone with a documented loss of income as a result of the pandemic is eligible for up to $300 a month of the local currency.

Businesses up and down the town's quaint Main Street accept the wooden note for everything except alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and lottery tickets. Tenino's city government backs the local currency, which merchants can exchange for U.S. dollars at city hall at a 1:1 rate.

The tiny town founded around a sandstone quarry achieved national prominence in 1931 when civic leaders printed a wooden local currency to restore consumer confidence after the town's bank failed during the Great Depression.

The mayor brought the idea of resurrecting the town's legacy project to the city council as a way to provide economic relief to businesses and residents suffering as a result of lockdown measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. In April councillors approved the proposal to issue up to $10,000 in local scrip.

So far, 13 residents have successfully applied for the funds and some $2,500 worth of wooden bills have been issued, Fournier said, with donations upping the total funds available to $16,000.

Don Juan's Mexican Kitchen Owner Juan Martinez is pictured next to a sign saying they accept the city's wooden money, or scrip, an idea the city used during the Great Depression to help struggling residents and local businesses and is now being used as a COVID-19 stimulus in Tenino, Washington

Mayor Wayne Fournier holds $25 in wooden money. Tenino had become a ghost town, and small businesses were struggling to survive amid the coronavirus pandemic, so local officials revived an unconventional idea from the last century: print its own currency on planks of wood.