14 minute read
PAGE
Citizen CHATHAM SOUTHEAST Week of April 1, 2020 | Vol. 56 | No. 1 | www.citizennewspapergroup.com
NEW EMERGENCY LOAN PROGRAM TO BOOST SMALL BUSINESSES To give small businesses and their employees a boost and lessen the financial challenge during COVID-19, city of Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and Mayor Lori Lightfoot have partnered to create a new Emergency Loan Program, with money from the Chicago Catalyst Fund, the City of Chicago and private sponsors. PAGE 2
Melissa Conyears-Ervin (pictured) is the City of Chicago Treasurer, as well as chairman of the Chicago Catalyst Fund. The Chicago Catalyst Fund is contributing $50 million to the City of Chicago’s $100 million Chicago Small Business Resiliency Fund, which will help small businesses with financial challenges due to COVID-19. Photo courtesy of City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin
BUSINESS 5 Financial Tips for Teens PAGE 4
NEWS 7 Steps to Prepare for a Home Remodel PAGE 7
FOOD Simple, Plant-Powered Summer Meals PAGES 8
briefly
EDUCATION MEASURES ASSIST LICENSEES AND EDUCATION PROVIDERS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has announced several proactive measures to help professional licensees and education providers in light of the challenges confronting all Illinoisans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing the limitation of in-person course availability and to further reduce contact between individuals, the department has issued a series of variances that provide relief from the provisions of certain administrative rules pertaining to license renewal terms and to continuing education requirements.
Any professional licenses issued by the department that have renewal dates between March 1, 2020 through and including July 31, 2020, are granted an automatic extension to renew to September 30, 2020. Additionally, all current licensees under the department’s jurisdiction whose license renewal deadlines fall within the period beginning March 1, 2020 through and including July 31, 2020, shall have up to, and including, September 30, 2020 to complete their continuing education coursework. The department is also allowing licensees to complete their continuing education coursework without requiring live attendance and permit for interactive webinar and online distance education courses in addition to currently permitted methods. These and all departmental licensees must continue to comply with all pertinent provisions of their respective licensing acts.
HEALTH DENTAL CARE HABITS OF AMERICANS REVEALED IN HONOR OF WORLD ORAL HEALTH DAY
Weave, one of the fastest-growing companies in tech, recently announced new research detailing the dental habits and preferences of Americans to help bring attention to World Oral Health Day. Weave commissioned an independent study of over 1,100 people to learn more about their dental care hygiene habits and their preferences for interacting with their dental care providers. The data show that most patients prefer more “modern” dental practices--those who send both appointment reminders and payment requests via text messages. Other key points from the study showed that 70% of patients would gladly leave an online review if their dentist sent them a link to do so and 53% of patients have gone over 3 years without getting their teeth checked. To learn more about Weave’s complete business toolbox, including solutions for dental care providers, please visit www.getweave.com.
LAW & POLITICS RAOUL: BERWYN MAN CHARGED WITH IMPERSONATING ILLINOIS SECRETARY OF STATE EMPLOYEE TO STEAL THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS
Attorney General Kwame Raoul recently announced that a Berwyn man was arrested and charged with posing as an employee of the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, offering government jobs and other favors for cash payments and ultimately defrauding four Cook County residents of at least $15,000.
Hugo Torres, 47, was arrested and charged with one count of theft by deception over $10,000, a Class 2 felony, punishable by three to seven years in prison, and one count of theft by deception over $500, a Class 3 felony, punishable by five to 10 years in prison. According to a press release, Torres was previously convicted in a similar scheme in which he posed as a supervisor for the Illinois Secretary of State and made phony promises of jobs with the Secretary of State’s office. Torres has never been an employee of or affiliated in any capacity with the Secretary of State’s office.
BY TIA CAROL JONES
To give small businesses and their employees a boost and lessen the financial challenge during COVID-19, city of Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and Mayor Lori Lightfoot have partnered to create a new Emergency Loan Program, with money from the Chicago Catalyst Fund, the City of Chicago and private sponsors.
Chicago Catalyst Fund will contribute 50 percent, $50 million to the $100 million Chicago Small Business Resiliency Fund. The city of Chicago will contribute $25 million and the other $25 million will come from other private entities.
Conyears-Ervin said she has been an advocate for small businesses since she took office in May 2019. Throughout the time, she has been on a listening tour to find out how the city treasurer’s office could help small businesses.
Conyears-Ervin said as the chairman of the Catalyst Fund, she has been working with Mayor Lightfoot. “And so, it was a no-brainer with the treasurer’s office with us being a true advocate for small businesses, working to help develop them and to truly help with the health of small businesses. It was a no-brainer for us to partner with the Resiliency Fund on this,” she said.
Conyears-Ervin said she wants to reassure residents that the city treasurer’s office is working to protect jobs.
“So, with this fund, in order to qualify to receive funding from this program, small businesses have to dedicate up to 50 percent of the fund to payroll. Because that means we are investing in jobs,” she said.
Conyears-Ervin said from her background, she knows what it means to live check-to-check and the importance Continued from page 1
of a parent having a job.
“Because three out of five residents are hourly, that means that they need their jobs,” she said. “So, we are making certain with this investment, that the Chicago Catalyst Fund is doing, with me as the chairman of the board of the Catalyst Fund, we are making certain this investment to the Resiliency Fund will protect employees, which leads to protecting working families.”
The fund is for small businesses with between 1 and 50 employees. It will also be for small businesses in underserved and under-resourced communities.
“We’re making certain when we say we’re helping small businesses, we mean that,” she said. “And then also with this fund, we’re making certain up to 50 percent of the fund will be loaned to businesses in underserved areas. This is great for our communities that are underserved because this will help them, it’s being dedicated to help them.”
Conyears-Ervin said underserved and under-resourced communities include the South and West sides of Chicago, where neighborhoods suffer from years of disinvestment. The parameters of the program are still being built, she said, adding what makes this a low-interest loan is that for the first six months, the interest rate will be 0. She said the Resiliency Fund will rely on Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) such as Accion, Chicago Community Loan Fund and the microfinance group of Chicago Neighborhood Initiative, to underwrite and administer the loans.
“This is important because our small businesses are the backbone of Chicago’s economy. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen it, we’ve seen how COVID-19 has crippled our local businesses. And really, we as residents, we rely on those local businesses,” she said.
Melissa Conyears-Ervin City of Chicago Treasurer
“So, this is so very important, these last few weeks, there’s been a lot of focus on the safety of individuals, and now we’re able to also say, we want to focus on the health and vitality of our local businesses. When we support small businesses, we support their workers, which in turn, helps our working families.”
Conyears-Ervin said each business that applies could receive up to $50,000, out of the $100,000 from the Resiliency Fund. “You look at $100 million and up to $50, 000 means that we could potentially help more than 2,000 small business owners,” she said. “We could potentially help up to 2,000 small businesses in Chicago and one to 50 employees, that could be a real true save to our working families.”
Conyears-Ervin said small businesses can go to www.chicagocatalystfund.com or www.cityofchicago.org/coronavirus to get more information and to apply. They also can express interest via those websites.
“The hope will be over the next couple of weeks that everything will be worked out and the CDFIs will be up and ready to go to start the formal application process with the small business owners, but they should start expressing their interest now,” she said.
Is Your Company’s Bench Deep Enough During Difficult Times?
In the uncertain times that the coronavirus produced, business leaders were forced to face the fact that employees might not be available every day to do their jobs – either because of their own health concerns or because they were scrambling to make childcare arrangements because of school closings.
And, as the economy takes a hit, some businesses may even need to downsize, leaving the remaining workers to take on duties they are unprepared for and weren’t hired to carry out.
That’s one reason why it’s always a good idea to cross-train employees, allowing someone else to step in when circumstances necessitate it, says Bill Higgs, an authority on corporate culture and the ForbesBooks author of the Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business(www.culturecodechampions.com/training).
“Ultimately, you want everyone who works for you to broaden their knowledge and expand the scope of what they normally do,” says Higgs, a founder and former CEO of Mustang Engineering who recently launched the Culture Code Champions podcast.
“The result is a more efficient and productive workplace.”
In his younger days, Higgs was an Army Ranger, where the need to cross-train was inescapable.
“If you are on a critical military mission and someone goes down, another Ranger needs to take over that person’s duties,” Higgs says. “Otherwise, the mission would be scrapped.” The average business day may not be as severely distressing as a military mission, but just as in the military, cross-training comes with benefits, he says. It prevents mistakes. It improves accuracy. It saves time. It saves money. And each additional duty an employee can take on during uncertain times could make the difference on whether a project or order is completed on time, and whether missed deadlines leave customers unhappy, costing the business money – or even leading to it going out of business.
“Some business leaders may say they just can’t work in the time for cross-training because they and their employees are too busy,” Higgs says. “They probably are busy, but it needs to be a priority and they need to figure out a way to find the time. We’re probably seeing right now just how important it can be.” A few suggestions he has for working cross-training in to harried schedules include: l Make use of downtime. Few people are busy every minute, so take advantage of any downtime to slip in cross-training, Higgs says. “That way, no one is just sitting around waiting for the next project,” he says. “At Mustang, for example, if an instrument engineer’s work slowed down, then we moved him or her over to automation or some other functional area that was related to, but slightly different from, the person’s regular job.” l Schedule time. “I’m skeptical when people tell me they don’t have any downtime, but let’s assume that’s so,” Higgs says. “Then I recommend you set aside time specifically dedicated to cross-training. It’s that important.” Figure out who you need to cross-train, he says, and find the areas of your business where cross-training will pay off the most. l Implement “lunch-and-learns.” Nearly everyone eats lunch or takes a break at mid-day, and that’s a great time to set up some lunchand-learn times when someone in the company can teach others about what they do, Higgs says. “At Mustang, we even had vendors come in and talk about their products and services,” he says.
“An added bonus to cross-training is people who don’t normally interact are brought together and develop a better appreciation for what others do,” Higgs says. “That helps to create an even greater sense of team throughout the organization, which is especially important during difficult times like these when everyone needs to pull together.”
About Bill Higgs
Bill Higgs (www.culturecodechampions.com/ training), an authority on corporate culture, is the ForbesBooks author of Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business. He trains companies on how to improve their bottom line by improving their culture, and recently launched the Culture Code Champions podcast, where he has interviewed such notable subjects as former CIA director David Petraeus and NASA’s woman pioneer Sandra Coleman. Culture Code Champions is listed as a New & Noteworthy podcast on iTunes. Higgs is also the co-founder and former CEO of Mustang Engineering Inc. In 20 years, they grew the company from their initial $15,000 investment and three people to a billion-dollar company with 6,500 people worldwide. Second, third and fourth-generation leaders took the company to $2 billion in 2014. Higgs is a distinguished 1974 graduate (top 5 percent academically) of the United States Military Academy at West Point and runner up for a Rhodes scholarship. He is an Airborne Ranger and former commander of a combat engineer company.
Supreme Court Sides with Comcast in Discrimination Dispute Against Byron Allen
BY STACY M. BROWN NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia
In a decision issued online Monday, March 23, over entrepreneur and media mogul Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Networks in a discrimination lawsuit against Comcast, the Supreme Court’s justices have unanimously decided to send the case back to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The lower court will now determine whether or not is should reconsider Allen’s claims in his $20 billion suit.
In an Op-Ed for BlackPressUSA. com, Maurita Coley, President and CEO of the Multicultural Media, Telecom, and Internet Council (MMTC) explains, “The lawsuit arose out of Comcast’s decision several years ago not to carry several Allen-owned television channels, such as Pets.TV and Recipe.TV. Comcast has argued its rejection of Allen’s channels was purely a business decision, reflecting what it viewed as the channels’ limited audience appeal. Allen then promptly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast, alleging that the company’s refusal to contract with Allen’s company was racially motivated, in violation of Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
“District Court Judge Terry Hatter – a well-respected African American judge with an apparently strong record on civil rights – dismissed the case three times, finding that Allen had not established a plausible argument that Comcast would have contracted with his company ‘but for’ Allen’s race.
“Allen appealed to the 9th Circuit, which remanded Judge Hatter’s dismissal with a new guideline to the lower court that a plaintiff can state a viable claim under Section 1981 if discriminatory intent plays any role in a defendant’s decision not to contract, regardless of whether race discrimination was a “but for” cause of that decision. Comcast petitioned the Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit’s decision, and the Supreme Court agreed.”
The Supreme Court filing, Comcast Corp vs. NAAAOM, was the result of an appeal by Comcast of the 9th Circuit’s decision.
Comcast argued that the Section 1981 ban can only be interpreted as requiring “but for” causation. It argued that everyone must have “the same right” as white citizens “to make and enforce contracts.”
Comcast assured the justices that reasons that have nothing to do with race, such as a lack of bandwidth, and its decision to focus on news and sports content, were the basis of their decision not to carry ESN’s channels. Moreover, Comcast noted it had, for many years, carried numerous other African American-owned networks.
ESN countered that Comcast’s position would prohibit a plaintiff who alleges that race was a motivating factor for the refusal to contract from conducting fact-finding discovery on the claim, no matter how strong the evidence of racism, unless the plaintiff could meet the stringent requirement of plausibly alleging that race was the ‘but-for’ cause of the refusal to contract.
That, ESN reasonably insists, is an extremely high and difficult hurdle because “the defendant typically is
www.citizennewspapergroup.com the only party with access to evidence of the defendant’s motives.”
On Monday, Comcast released the following statement, “We are pleased the Supreme Court unanimously restored certainty on the standard to bring and prove civil rights claims. The well-established framework that has protected civil rights for decades continues. The nation’s civil rights laws have not changed with this ruling; they remain the same as before the case was filed.
“We now hope that on remand, the 9th Circuit will agree that the District Court properly applied the
law in dismissing Mr. Allen’s case three separate times for failing to state any claim.
“We are proud of our record on diversity and will not rest on this record. We will continue to look for ways to add even more innovative and diverse programming that appeals to our diverse viewership and continue our diversity and inclusion efforts across the company.”
NNPA attempted to contact Byron Allen’s attorneys for a statement. However, at the time of this writing, neither Allen nor his attorneys have provided any comments.
