Through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), Lee County was provided $149 million from the federal government for Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funding to support the local response and recovery from the COVID-19 public health emergency.
That's a lot of money to distribute and keep track of through the system, let alone to monitor the final results for local economic impact. I spoke with Tatum Walker, senior business developer for the Lee County Economic Development Office, who was largely responsible for managing this process for the county on the business assistance side. I asked Walker how much of the $149,000,000 received by the county for coronavirus recovery was used specifically to support local business?
"I'm going to break that number down a couple of times because we provided 3 different programs," said Walker. "My first program was to upscale the workforce and provide scholarship opportunities for certifications that fills the needs of our businesses and provides career paths for our workforce. For Lee County, the Board of County Commissioners allocated $3,000,000 for these educational programs.
"The second level of support was partnering with SCORE: The Small Business Development Center, Southwest Florida Regional Manufacturers Association, Health for Impact Partners, and Goodwill to provide non cost business consulting or technical assistance. We paid those partners $475,000 to fund these services. And the third level of support was a couple $1,000,000 in form of a grant and direct allocation to these businesses. But this is in addition to the first tranche of federal funding we received for COVID, which was the CARES funding which issued over $14 million to small businesses and $5.5 million to human services and food. So I don't know if you're adding that up, but that equals about $22 million small doses since since 2020."
I asked how the money was distributed from the county out to our local business community?
"Through our technical assistance providers that provide the consulting services are meant to provide the business with an evaluation and determine opportunities that create resiliency in the business and help their business operations for future emergencies. So once the businesses meet with their technical assistance provider and these opportunities are identified, the consultants recommend them to the small business resiliency grant, which is through Lee County providing $5000 to $20,000 directly investing into these enhancements for small businesses."
I asked about the qualifications for the businesses in order to receive the money.
"ARPA funds are federally regulated. The funds must be targeted to disproportionately affected small businesses as federally determined by qualified census tracts or low to moderate income geographical locations. So our technical assistance providers worked with identifying businesses located in these determined zones and would meet with the businesses, determine their needs and where the consultant would refer them to the grant. So the business had to work with a consultant to identify these needs before being able to apply. The grant referral form was completed with the specific items and needs on how these requests would improve resiliency for each business and they were submitted and then the business owner would fill out an application and upload required documents. Then there's a three-step review process to determine funding."
Walker said that the total ARPA specific direct to business funds distributed was $2,038,000.
So, in my opinion, we will be seeing the benefits of and local economic impact from the use of these funds as soon as right now and well into the future.
Karen Moore is a contributing partner for WGCU and the publisher of SWFL Business Today.
