Cobb commissioners to consider $50M in small business grants

Commissioner Bob Ott of East Cobb is proposing that $50 million of the $132.6 million in federal Coronavirus-related stimulus funding the county is getting be used to help small businesses get back on their feet.

He’s proposed a spending measure to be considered at Tuesday’s regular business meeting that would call for the creation of an independent body to select the businesses receiving the assistance and for the Cobb Chamber of Commerce to administer the grants, which are provided through the federal CARES Act.

(You can read the agenda item here).

Eligible businesses would have 100 or fewer employees and may not have received previous funding from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or Small Business Administration loans available through the CARES Act.

In addition, 60 percent of the grant money for each small business must go toward hiring or maintaining employees. The businesses cannot be publicly traded and must have a primary or branch location in Cobb County.

The amount of funding selected businesses would receive including the following:

1 to 10 employees – up to $20,000;
11 to 50 employees – up to $30,000;
51 to 100 employees – up to $40,000.

(Here’s more about the criteria and a memorandum of understanding between the board and the Chamber.

The Chamber would receive $500,000 of stimulus funds to administer the grants, which would be selected evenly across the four commissioners districts by a committee chosen by commissioners and the Chamber.

Ott also has proposed spending $1.5 million in CARES Act money for eviction relief that would be administered through Star-C Communities, an Atlanta based non-profit that works to reduce transiency in affordable housing communities.

The organization would receive $120,000 to administer the assistance program. As drawn up in the proposal, low-income apartment dwellers facing evictions would receive a “scholarship” of up to 70 percent of their overdue payment total. The remaining 20 percent would be paid by the tenant and the landlord would be asked to pay the remaining 10 percent and waive the late fee.

(Details and criteria here.).

Those items will come up for consideration after a related measure asking commissioners to designate several categories for spending the federal stimulus funding.

They include the following:

Disaster Relief/County Preparedness
Economic Development/Business Loans
Emergency Food Program
Emergency Shelter Program
School Assistance Programs
Job Training
County Contingency

Commissioners could add and change the categories at a later time. Last week they approved the first amount of CARES Act funding, $1 million in reimbursements for non-profit agencies like MUST Ministries that have been providing emergency food aid to those in need.

This Tuesday’s meeting starts at a special time, 1:30 p.m., and this will be a virtual meeting streamed on the county’s YouTube and Facebook pages and Website as well as the Cobb TV23 public access cable channel on Comcast.

Public comment also is available and those who wish to take part by phone or computer must sign up at this link.

The full agenda can be found here.

The board’s agenda work session starts Tuesday at 9 a.m. and also will be streamed.