Businesses grade SBA’s response to Ian

Special to SWFBT

Submitted by Karen

P. Moore, Publisher

Lee County business and community leaders recently attended a meeting lead by Small Business Administration executives. It was the first report card, if you will, for local SBA management, on how the SBA has done and is doing with helping Lee County businesses get back on their feet.

Rafaela Monchek, SBA Deputy Associate Administrator for Disaster Assistance, explained, “The reason we’re here today is to listen to how the SBA has done so far from all of you, and to talk about a target business analysis we’re starting to help businesses become more resilient through specialized trainings we offer and access to the not-disaster SBA programs we offer, through a targeted outreach program.”

Dana Brunett, Lee County Economic Development Office, shared, “With the amount of damage from Hurricane Ian, a Category 5 storm, having six months to submit an SBA business loan application is not enough time. I really think you should consider a policy change on that because these people are trying to put their lives back together—a lot of them lost their home and their business and they just didn’t have enough time to react to it. And many of them lost records.”

SBA See page 5