Members:
I wanted to share a few things related to COVID-19 relief related to businesses that have occurred this week. First of all, on Monday President Joe Biden announced a plan to allow smaller and low income businesses to essentially go to the head of the line in the current round of PPP loans that are forgivable. This is available to businesses with less than 20 employees. The window of access opened Wednesday, Feb. 24 and continues for 14 days at which time it will be opened up to larger businesses. In the past this was a problem because larger businesses sucked up the funds available in a very short time. If you feel this might be an option for you I would urge you to contact your regular lender or locally call the Small Business Development Center at (575) 769-4136 and ask about PPP loans. To read about this update CLICK HERE.
Secondly, the Governor signed a $200 million relief package today that will contain grants of up to $100,000 for businesses of 75 or less that meant certain criteria. The grants will be based on rehiring employees or adding additional employees and the business must demonstrate a loss in at least one quarter comparing 2020 to 2019. The grant funds will reimburse businesses for rent, lease or mortgage payments. The program will be administered by the New Mexico Finance Authority. Applications are not yet available for that program but we’ll let you know when they go online. To read more about that package CLICK HERE.
Finally, in case you’ve been living under a rock and didn’t hear the shouts of joy, Roosevelt County is now in the yellow classification under the public health order with the biggest change for us locally being the reopening of limited indoor dining in our restaurants. There was some incorrect information in the first press releases Wednesday when that news broke, restaurants are actually eligible to open at 33 percent of capacity if they have received their New Mexico Safe certification. CLICK HERE to read more.
Enjoy dining out this weekend but do it safely. We want to make sure we don’t fall back to red in two weeks.
Karl Terry, Executive Director
Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce
100 S. Avenue A
Portales, NM 88130
(575) 356-8541 or (800) 635-8036
