Transcript
Hi everyone. I’m Alex Hoeft with today’s Moonshine Minutes, which center around a big worry made bare by the COVID-19 pandemic: money — or lack thereof. With sectors shutting down right and left back in March, business owners were suddenly facing zero income to pay their staff, cover their rent, and keep the lights on.
Enter the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, housed under the CARES Act and implemented by the Small Business Administration. As a reminder for our listeners: Through the program, businesses can receive a salve for the wound of pandemic-wrought service limitations or having to close altogether: Funds for eight or 24 weeks of payroll (including benefits), mortgage or rent, and utilities.
The latest numbers include over five million loans distributed across the country to the tune of $519 billion. California alone received $67 billion in loans while Nevada businesses received $4 billion.
And on a local level? To date, over 1,500 businesses based around the Truckee/North Lake Tahoe area received monetary assistance through the program. The list of recipients is broken down into those who received loans over and under $150,000.
Businesses that got over $150,000 are listed by name, but don’t have specific amounts. Rather, monetary ranges are given. We know, for example, that Squaw Creek Associates LLC received between $2 and $5 million, and that the Zephyr Point Presbityrian Conference Center got between $350,000 and $1 million.
Loans provided under the $150,000 mark are listed by specific amount, but names are withheld, meaning we calculated that nearly $52 million in financial assistance was provided to businesses in Alpine Meadows, Incline Village, Kings Beach, Squaw Valley, Truckee, Tahoe City, Tahoe Vista, Tahoma, and Zephyr Cove.
Applications from businesses are still being accepted until Aug. 8. For those in need of technical assistance with loans, the Sierra Small Business Development Center is a local option.
Jessica Perry Carr, associate director for the Sierra SBDC, told us in an email that the center’s goal is to ensure maximum forgiveness for small businesses amidst changing guidelines.
“In addition to the federal resources like the PPP and the [Economic Injury Disaster Loans], we are encouraging businesses to seek additional relief through state and local options such as the Resilience Fund, which is now available to the entire Truckee/Tahoe region, and the Nevada County Relief Fund, which is currently raising donations for a third round of distribution of microgrants.”
Interested in seeing if the businesses you patron are on our list of PPP recipients? Our breakdown can be found online in the article titled Truckee/North Tahoe Businesses that Received PPP Funding at moonshineink.com.
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