RECOVERY AID OFFERED TO LOCAL BUSINESSES
LAKE COUNTY >> As the winter surge of the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, prominent members of the Lake County government and business community zoomed in Monday for the first meeting of the small business COVID-19 Recovery Team to discuss, among other issues, a collaborative approach towards securing all possible pandemic disaster relief funding available for businesses, including the application process for paycheck protection program loans and the logistics of sharing the information with local businesses.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a complex and fast- changing business environment and added innumerable layers of financial and procedural complication,” noted county officials prior to Monday’s zoom meeting and added, “We all want to do what we can to help, and that includes your local governments.”
Team members and/or representatives in attendance included District 2 County Supervisor Bruno Sabatier (who was elected committee chair) District 3 Supervisor Eddie Cran
dell, Lakeport councilor Mireya Turner (elected as Vice Chair) Rick White from the Lake County Economic Development Corporation, Carol Beare from the Middletown Area Merchants Association, Kevin Ingram, city manager in Lakeport, Alan Flora city manager in Clearlake, Carol Huchingson County administrative officer, Wilda Shock City of Lakeport economic development specialist and Melissa Fulton, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.
Sabatier led team members in a discussion of the California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program a $5 million funding program which makes grants up to $25,000 available to eligible businesses. The first round of applications opens today and closes on January 8. Webinars have been occurring daily and registration is available at https://fullerton. zoom.us/ webinar/register/ WN_ DNMLHwM5SSehzR x AK kSFZA
The informational webinars run until January 4 and Sabatier summarized the key points of some of the ones he has attended which included details on the necessary documentation for business to apply for
grants such as their most recent tax return filed (2019 or 2018) and the fact the funds will not be available to businesses who have more than $2.5 million in revenue.
Sabatier said the status of Lake County (which recently crossed over into the state’s purple tier) will definitely have an impact on who gets priority for the funds. “We should not see that as a bad thing, but that will definitely make it a more difficult situation for our businesses to access some of these funds.”
A discussion of how to reach as many of the busi
nesses in the county to make them aware of the programs was proposed. Fulton said in addition to reaching out to all chamber members, information about the relief funding has been sent out to all of the business associations. A townhall with specific information about the grant program was also discussed as a future possibility.
“My concern is the reality is, if just based on population, if you break the numbers down, I am assuming that there’s going to be
maybe 20 businesses out of this first round in Lake County that are going to get funding so there’s going to be a lot of competition for that,” said Flora. “It’s unfortunate that there isn’t going to be more funding available. I think there is going to be a lot of disappointed businesses out there that aren’t going to get access to this funding because it’s just not enough.”
Lobbying the Legislature for rural communities, letting businesses know where to go for resources and supporting the work of existing groups such as the Lake County Economic Development Corporation were all talked about as long term goals of the newly formed organization.
Sabatier talked about potential avenues to change the scope of what is possible for Lake County businesses to receive in terms of state funding.
“I believe in the fact that our jurisdictional lines are very fictitious, it’s only for where we can spend money, viruses don’t care about jurisdictional lines but yet we’ve been surrounded by purple,” said Sabatier. “Just because we have done a good job of keeping our cases low should not mean we don’t get the same level of access because our folks travel nonstop to go to work in places that are heavily deep in purple and we’ve been paying a lot of money from our businesses to help keep them safe, our staff, our customers and I think that we should ask the state, at the very least, to look at bordering purple areas because of the fact that we are within the regional area of the danger zone and we just happen to have done a better job.”
The team agreed to hold all future meetings every Monday at 1 P. M. until it is no longer necessary for them to discuss COVID-19 relief matters.