OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – According to officials with the City of Oklahoma City, the first round of payments as part of the city’s Small Business Continuity Program will start going out to businesses that qualify next week.
“I checked in a bunch about it, but there’s really nowhere to check in,” Valerie Riley told News 4.
Riley owns LifeSquire, a personal assistant service. She said she applied for pandemic relief funds through Oklahoma City’s Small Business Continuity Program several weeks ago.
“The majority of our business, here in Oklahoma City especially, is in people’s homes, and so, we couldn’t get in people’s home for almost two months,” Riley said.
Because of that, she said they’ve seen a 65 percent drop in revenue.
“I think it’s going to take, probably at least, this year to rebuild,” she said.
Back on March 31, the Oklahoma City City Council approved $5.5 million in funds for the Small Business Continuity Program.
The $5.5 million includes the following:
• $3 million for loans, both low interest and no interest forgivable
• $500,000 for businesses that need help with technical assistance, like adjusting to operating out of their homes
• $1.5 million for the incentive program with up to $10,000 in funds for retained employee payroll for businesses that qualify.
Riley applied for the incentive program.
“We’re working our way through it with 600 applications to review. It’s a little bit of a tedious task,” Joanna McSpadden, the city’s Economic Development Program Manager, said.
She said the application window was open from April 6-17 and since then, a team of 18 people has been pouring through all of those applications.
“The first round of payments will actually go out on Tuesday,” McSpadden said. “Once we get that first group out next week, we’ll just kind of start seeing the rest of it flow out.”
That first round will be those who qualify for the incentive program.
So that’s a big relief for Riley, if she’s approved.
“We are slowly seeing some clients, new clients come, but nowhere near what we lost,” Riley said.
