New small businesses left out of COVID-19 economic relief, PPP loans

Packages meant to supply financial aid to struggling small companies through the COVID-19 pandemic have left Leslie Fleuranges pissed off.

Fleuranges, proprietor of Tender Loving Care Pet Nursing Lodge in Topeka, tried to use for such packages. However whereas researching her choices, Fleuranges found she wasn’t eligible for many of the government-funded loans and grants being supplied by native, state and nationwide entities.

As a result of Fleuranges opened her business last year, she is not capable of evaluate her 2020 income to that of earlier years. And such comparisons are required of small companies making use of for these financial aid packages, such because the Paycheck Safety Program, as a strategy to reveal the coronavirus pandemic has had a destructive affect on revenue.

“I’ve been negatively impacted, and so they want to think about one other metric for companies that opened in 2020,” Fleuranges stated. “I imply, who hasn’t been negatively impacted?”

Fleuranges had hoped she could be eligible for the most recent round of PPP funding, however that wasn’t the case.

Now, she and another small-business homeowners that opened retailers final 12 months really feel they’ve been neglected by folks designing these packages that have been meant to maintain small companies afloat.

In line with Angela Lingg, press secretary for U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, companies needed to be working by Feb. 15, 2020, with the intention to qualify for PPP loans. Lingg indicated that requirement was designed to “guarantee accountable use of taxpayer {dollars} and safeguard towards potential fraud, resembling shell firms being created to obtain PPP.”

“By the Paycheck Safety Program and different packages, Congress has labored to deliver aid to small companies through the COVID-19 pandemic,” Moran stated in a press release. “Nevertheless, there are nonetheless necessary small companies which have fallen by way of the cracks — eating places, retail shops, the dwell occasion business and others.”

He stated Congress and the Small Enterprise Administration should work diligently to search out options that present aid to these companies which were omitted.

For brand spanking new small-business homeowners like Fleuranges, these options could not come quickly sufficient.

“I am not experiencing something completely different than some other small-business proprietor,” she stated. “My enterprise is down as a result of nobody is touring and nobody goes into the workplace, so consequently, they do not want daycare, they do not want in a single day care (for his or her pets).”

In line with Abbey Brown, proprietor of Milestone Market, a marriage retail boutique in North Topeka, her enterprise formally opened only a week earlier than Shawnee County adopted a stay-at-home order in late March.

“Our goal market and the oldsters which are our purchasers are those that are planning occasions,” Brown stated. “And all through 2020, there have been loads of restrictions on occasions and simply not occasions happening — so our gross sales undoubtedly have been impacted by that, simply by nature of the business that we serve.”

Like Fleuranges, Brown stated she hasn’t been capable of faucet into government-funded COVID-19 aid, and her enterprise needed to adapt its enterprise mannequin fairly rapidly — by opening a web based store, as an example — to outlive.

Although Brown stated she respects the time, effort and difficult choices policy-makers have needed to make whereas crafting pandemic aid packages, she thinks there must be extra monetary assist for brand new small companies that “are sturdy and courageous and attempting to start out throughout a novel season like this.”

“It doesn’t matter what stage of enterprise you’re in, 2020 was a tough 12 months,” she stated. “I do hope that in 2021 we’ll be capable of discover some assist for these of us that have been capable of get by way of the exhausting 2020.”

If she would not obtain some form of financial help this 12 months, Brown stated she is going to probably must proceed adapting her enterprise mannequin to outlive 2021.

One other small enterprise that has stayed alive after opening in mid-March is Milk & Honey Coffee Co. in southeast Topeka.

Darlene Morgan, co-owner of the espresso store, stated the explanation Milk & Honey has survived is due to assist from the Topeka neighborhood and the Better Topeka Partnership’s HOST Relief Program, which was funded by each personal donors and Topeka and Shawnee County’s Joint Financial Improvement Group.

“Topeka stepped up and helped native companies the very best they may,” Morgan stated.

Funds from the HOST Aid Program have been used to bought $3,000-5,000 price of reward playing cards from native enterprise, and people reward playing cards have been then handed out to native staff who have been left unemployed by the pandemic. Milk & Honey occurred to be a beneficiary of these gift-card purchases.

“That was an enormous, enormous part to native companies,” Morgan stated. “That in itself was like a grant to us.”

Nonetheless, she stated, it has been troublesome not having the ability to entry state and federal loans.

“It was simply irritating as a result of I felt like we’ve got a enterprise right here that clearly the neighborhood appreciates,” Morgan stated. “May which were considered by the federal government? … I believe the federal government might have been a little bit extra versatile in  the best way to hand out these loans.”

Fleuranges stated a technique the federal government might accommodate new companies is by permitting them to check their gross sales to business requirements.

“They need my tax returns, they need my company papers, they’d like my marketing strategy — I am going to give all of it to them,” she stated. “However I haven’t got year-ago gross sales. It is the one factor I haven’t got.”

Evaluating her 2020 gross sales to business requirements, she stated, might present an answer.

“An business customary for a pet care enterprise like mine — at Christmas, I ought to have been at 100% occupancy. Each one among my suites ought to have been crammed. I used to be at 26%, and that was for 3 days,” Fleuranges stated. “I can present business requirements for each month of the 12 months.”

Curtis Sneden, president of the Better Topeka Chamber of Commerce, stated that might be an inexpensive answer.

“It is actually a matter of engaged on the way in which companies can present their hardship and making it potential for newer companies to entry that aid, too,” he stated. “(Evaluating gross sales to business requirements) could be an instance of one other means of proving the destructive affect of the pandemic.”

Fleuranges additionally hopes to see the Joint Financial Improvement Group take into account the struggles of latest companies when deciding what to do with the $700,000 it earmarked for economic relief final month.

Aaron Mays, a Shawnee County commissioner, JEDO board member and member of the three-person activity pressure in control of figuring out what to do with that cash, stated they hope to have a complete plan by JEDO’s Feb. 10 assembly.

“We now have loads of planning left to do,” Mays stated. “The hope is that any enterprise that has fallen by way of the cracks of different packages could be eligible for ours. That’s actually the intention of this plan.”

Morgan, with Milk & Honey Espresso Co., stated even $5,000 might actually assist a small enterprise like hers.

“As with all enterprise, you have got an excessive quantity of overhead (prices) you must pay for,” she stated. “Once you throw a pandemic on high of that and the concern that comes with it, which is completely comprehensible, you are decreasing your buyer consumption. When you may entry $5,000 … the primary place it is going to go is overhead and debt and contractors.

“Not solely that, however we utilized probably the most native companies we might after we opened up. … These are small companies that want their cash, too. If we acquired (financial aid), it might have gone to them.”

— to www.cjonline.com

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