ENCINITAS BUSINESSES CAN APPLY FOR GRANTS

Encinitas will contribute $75,000 to restart a community grant program for small businesses facing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City Council unanimously decided Wednesday.

Mayor Catherine Blakespear said the city’s small businesses are desperate for help right now, and Councilman Tony Kranz said the state’s new restrictions on business activity are likely to linger given the soaring number of virus cases in California in recent days.

“It’s having significant impacts again, and I do expect it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he said.

The $75,000 that the council plans to use to assist small business will come out of the nearly $1.9 million that Encinitas has received from state and federal government this year to help it address the public health emergency. This is the second time the city has funded a small-business grant program during the pandemic. The council previously allocated $500,000 for small businesses and gave away 200 grants, each totaling $2,500.

Any registered small business in Encinitas with 25 or fewer employees and “customer serving premises” that was forced to shut down or had to severely modify its operations due to the pandemic was eligible for those grants.

The new program will be much smaller, with individual grants proposed to each total $1,500. It will be administered by the Cardiff-by-the-sea Foundation, which has worked with the Harbaugh Foundation to collect more than $100,000 in donations this year and distributed that money as grants to needy businesses, a staff report states.

A representative for the city, plus representatives for each of the city’s three 101 Main Street organizations as well as the Chamber of Commerce, will review the new grant applications. Applicants must have customerserving premises in the city and 25 or fewer employees.