3/31/2020
Hi everyone,
I have spoken to a number of you over the past two weeks, which has been immensely helpful for us to understand your business struggles from a personal level, and help us determine how we can best serve you at this time.
We have done some triage with you where there was an immediate opportunity to help. We will continue to do that. A question we hear often is that many of you already have significant debt; so are there forgivable loans or grants out there? There is only one we are aware of now, through
New Sun Rising’s Crisis Mitigation Relief Fund
. This one does have a short window, however, and applications are due by
April 2.
We have been in touch with the
Small Business Administration (SBA)
regarding whether they could confirm what we’d heard about loans as part of the Federal stimulus package released on Friday being forgivable. They explained that the specific rules had not been set yet, so there is no confirmation at this point, but once the rules are defined, they would be happy to do a webinar for Sto-Rox area businesses.
A press release from the SBA today describes a
Payroll Protection Program
that provides a recoverable loan for those whoe maintain their
workforce. It states SBA will forgive the portion of the loan proceeds that are used to cover
the first 8 weeks
of payroll and certain other expenses following loan origination.
Locally,
Key Bank
is offering access to the Paycheck Protection Program.
We have also been learning about other resources and tools throughout the region. The good news is there is a lot of focus on small business support. On the flip side, there is so much information related to business-associated loans, webinars, and programming out there that it can seem overwhelming to try to sift through it all.
Scratch that, it is overwhelming...
With dozens of organizations reinventing the wheel and providing virtually all the same information in various formats, we’ve been trying our best to find a central place sharing easy to digest information to recommend for you.
The Allegheny Conference on Community Development
and the
Urban Redevelopment Authority
websites seems to be the best fit as a go-to for information. While the URA does include some programming that is Pittsburgh specific, much of what is shared applies to businesses of all sizes here in McKees Rocks and Stowe Township.
We will continue to email updates outside of these reference pages as we become aware. Also, please share, any information with us that you feel we may not have and we’ll share it with the group.
Lastly, know we are here for you. If you have any questions, need help filling out forms, or just need someone to vent to please call me at (412)608-6765.
Sincerely,
