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Fort Worth continuing to disperse small businesses grants from the CARES Act
Tarrant County is offering small businesses grants to help them keep employees on the payroll, but the deadline is coming up.
FORT WORTH, Texas - Unemployment benefits nationwide are still much higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Latest claims show another 751,000 Americans filed for jobless benefits for the first time last week.
Tarrant County is offering small businesses grants to help them keep employees on the payroll, but the deadline is coming up.
Maverick Western Wear and Gifts in the Fort Worth Stockyards remains open for business.
Its owners say it has not been an easy ride, considering months of pandemic challenges.
“I can’t say where we’d be if it weren't for the help we’ve been getting financially,” Gayle Hill said.
A PPP loan helped the gift shop initially, then the shop realized more federal assistance via the city of Fort Worth’s Preserve the Fort Grant Program.
“I don’t think we could've survived without it, particularly, we were able to keep our employees all employed, as well, paying some of them for not working,” Hill added.
Since the pandemic, the city’s grant program has assisted more than 1,400 small businesses with 25 or fewer employees.
“We’ve got $60 million allocated, and we’ve got $45 million of it already in the hands of small businesses,” Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said.
Mayor Price notes a second round of grant applications closed a few weeks ago. Now the effort is on to get the final $15-$20 million dispersed before the looming deadline of December 31, which is when the city must exhaust all CARES Act funding its received.
“We have so many already in the queue who've applied the last time, and of course, we just ran out of money. So we will start with those people who already have their application in,” Price explained.
The city’s economic development director, Robert Sturns, oversees the program’s disbursements.
He said the need among small businesses, like Maverick Western Wear, is significantly great.
"We’re going to end up with a situation where we are not going to be able to fund everyone, and again, that number is fluctuating so, some of those may be ineligible, or maybe the estimated amount is less than what we projected," he explained.