Residents frustrated with Orange County’s stimulus application system

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Orange County's stimulus application portal experienced the second day of technical issues due to the high volume of users.

People we spoke to say they feel the county is giving them false hope that they will get the financial assistance. FOX 35 News viewers contacting us all day, voicing their frustrations.

“If the county is going to make a promise, we all need to have that reassurance that they will deliver,” said Melissa Lymangrover, Orange County resident.

Lymangrover is a single mother who is losing hope that she will get financial assistance from Orange County’s Orange CARES stimulus program. She tried applying Monday but the application portal closed. Tuesday, she woke up early to try again, only to experience glitch after glitch.

“As soon as I tried to upload my first document, which was my I.D., I tried to upload it and it was telling me that there was an error, to try again. I kept refreshing it with no avail,” said Lymangrover.

After two hours of trying, she got locked out.

“The third or fourth time I tried to do this all over again, it told me ‘Sorry, we can not take anymore, please try again tomorrow,’ and that just caused a lot more frustration,” said Lymangrover.

The website had hit a limit of 50,000 users. The county tweeting out the portal was closed for the day.

“We got the error yesterday, we got the error today, now we’re being told to try again tomorrow, is it going to happen tomorrow?” said Lymangrover.

Lymangrover said she feels helpless as her rent is coming due next week.

“If this doesn’t happen on time, then I’m going to be in trouble,” said Lymangrover.

The county said the system ran slower at times due to the large number of users that were in the system -- 50,000 people were allowed to start applications but only several thousand have been submitted.

We asked Orange County why Mayor Jerry Demings allowed the flood of applicants on one day, when the reason for the original daily limit was to allow for efficient processing. The county said the decision was made so that people wouldn’t be anxious about needing to try and enter the system multiple times.

“Instead of going through this vicious cycle every day, they should come up with a different plan,” said Lymangrover.

According to the county, the applications will not be backlogged because of the higher volume but may take longer to process because it may take longer to contact all the applicants.

The application portal is closed until further notice.