16 minute read
How Missoula grows
Sitting in a hanging seat, a window washer works near a corner of the Stockman’s Bank Building in downtown Missoula .
Community leaders share their vision
Advertisement
David Erickson david.erickson@missoulian.com
Editors note: These responses were submitted before the coronavirus pandemic.
18 MISSOULA BUSINESS • SPRING 2020
Missoula has seen more than $1 billion worth of public and private projects developed since 2013, an unprecedented expansion that’s causing growing pains for many as the city struggles with a severe lack of affordable housing, rising property tax bills and a workforce shortage. The building boom has been good to some but not as good for others, so city leaders will be on the hook to make sure Missoula grows in a way that benefits everyone on the socioeconomic ladder.
The Missoulian asked several elected officials and other community leaders the following questions to gauge their vision for the future: 1. What are the three most important things Missoula needs to do today to plan for growth so that all residents benefit? 2. What do you want Missoula to look like in 20 years?
Here are the answers: Amy Shattuck, principal, Lewis and Clark Elementary School: 1. Three important considerations for future growth need to revolve around community involvement and input, neighborhoods & schools, and preserving while improving what is best about our community of Missoula.
The reason our community continues to grow is directly related to these three important components:
Making sure we have the right people at the table to help develop this plan is essential. Input from a comprehensive group that includes representation from a variety of stakeholders, including the education community, is needed.
Neighborhood redevelopment and future development need to continue to have strong schools as their community center point. We have excellent educational institutions in Missoula and surrounding areas. Schools need to continue to provide a comprehensive education that prepares ALL of our students for a bright future in our community and abroad.
Preserving what makes Missoula so special is always a lens we need
to look through. We are lucky to have the open space and recreational opportunities at our fingertips in Missoula. Preserving and improving this way of life is essential as we move forward. 2. I want Missoula to be a place where opportunities are endless. Where we support our community members from sunset to sundown. Where we continue to have strong, safe and vibrant neighborhoods that have schools as their community hub. Where ALL our kids receive an excellent education that takes them where they want to go and beyond. And where we are still able to enjoy the open spaces that surround our amazing and beautiful community of Missoula.
Aaron Brock, Missoula Food Bank executive director: 1. We need to make plans that take into account the pressures that Missoulians are feeling today. The hardship for working-class families in accessing housing they can afford will continue to be a community challenge — one that I think we can meet with ingenuity.
Designing our city and our policies to be anti-racist and LGBTQ2S+ allied should be a priority — Missoula is good at talking about inclusivity and I think we can be deliberate in making policies that work to close equity gaps. Today, one in five people in the city of Missoula experiences food insecurity sometime throughout their year. We envision a future
where that number is smaller, and to get there, we have to address inequities.
We must also address wages. Folks coming through our doors are holding down two and three jobs and still not making it. It’s hard to envision smart growth without addressing the wage issues that many people are struggling with today.
2. Borrowing from our organizational vision statement: Missoula Food Bank & Community Center envisions a community that embraces food justice, where everyone is food secure and everyone can afford their basic needs.
A safer workplace is about five minutes away. No matter the work, safety works in Montana. But improving safety on the job doesn’t have to be as time-consuming or expensive as you might think. Our library of safety videos is full of simple strategies to protect yourself and your co-workers. And they’re short. So you can get back to work. Wherever that is. See them all at safemt.com.
TOM LUTEY for Missoula Business
BILLINGS — After calming panicked borrowers for the past two weeks of a statewide business shutdown, Montana banks were eager to hear the U.S. Small Business Administration lay out details about the $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package.
Lenders had fielded calls from owners of restaurants, hotels and bars. They’d heard from the nonprofits forced to cancel fundraising events. Anybody with a canceled concert or a film festival on hold was in dire straits. Main Street Montana is looking for a lifeline.
If there was a Montana lender who skipped a recent conference call with SBA, Western Security Bank Division President Mike Seppala didn’t know who it was.
“When I got on the call, there were 330 people. That’s almost every banker in the whole state,” Seppala said, who oversees six Glacier Western Security offices in Billings.
Lee Montana Newspapers visited with Seppala, as well as Stockman Bank Market President Wayne Nelson and SBA’s Montana director Brent Donnelly, about what borrowers needed to the know about federal financial aid programs rolling out counter the economic challenges of the pandemic.
The three also offered advice on how distressed borrowers should respond to Montana’s suspension of foreclosures and collections on overdue loans.
Are banks open for walk-in business right now?
“Everybody is working, we just have restricted access to our lobbies,” Seppala said. “If you call for an appointment, we’ll make an appointment, either over the phone or even in person. We’re going to ask you if you’re healthy, but that’s where we’re at right now. We’ve got everybody coming to work that’s not sick. We can do a lot of it over the internet, too. That’s not a problem”
Nelson said much of the communication between borrowers and Stockman Bank and can be done online. A phone call will get things started.
Most big banks have information to the COVID-19 pandemic on their websites. For more information on their procedures and availability, visit your bank’s website.
Banks will be the front counter for the dealing with businesses and other borrowers looking the tap into federal programs. What information do people need to be gathering up now to present to lenders?
“We’ve got a checklist, a short little punch list that we can provide to people,” Nelson said. “You don’t have to bring a whole lot. The SBA and the Treasury Department are trying to make this very streamlined, for obvious reasons. The driver of this on the Payroll Protection Program is your average monthly payroll cost. What people can do right now is gather 2019 payroll costs. And you can include in that, health insurance, 401(k) contributions, PTO, payroll taxes that were paid. And that’s going to come up to a gross number. It’s that simple. Give me the source documents. It could be QuickBooks, some other spreadsheets that you provide to the bank, where you certify those are your payroll costs.”
Seppala added that because tax filing deadlines have been extended four months from April 15 to July 15, business that have 2018 information available but nothing yet for 2019 should bring in the 2018 the information.
The Paycheck Protection Program is a newly created, $349 billion program intended to help businesses retain employees, rather than send them to the unemployment line, according to SBA. Banks will be the single point of contact for everything from applying for PPP to receiving funds to meet payroll. Businesses can receive federal loans to cover up to eight weeks of payroll and related overhead. The funds are supposed be available the same day a business is approved for the loan. And, the loans will be forgiven as long as the money is used to keep employees on payroll and for other expenses such as rent, mortgage interest and utility bills.
Keeping workers on payroll is the key to not having to repay the loan. No more than 25% of the forgiven loan amount can be for non-payroll costs. Maddy Ostwalt washes two crowlers before serving a customer at Thirsty Street Brewing Company in Billings on Thursday, March 19, 2020. Thirsty Street is serving to-go bottles and crowlers while restaurants and bars are closed in Yellowstone County due to the spread of coronavirus. MIKE CLARK, Lee Newspapers
Important for businesses that have already laid off workers, the Paycheck Protection Program is available retroactively to Feb. 15. Workers can be rehired through June 30.
Who qualifies for the Payroll Protection Program? Is just for forprofit businesses?
All businesses, including nonprofit groups, veterans’ organizations, tribal concerns, sole proprietorships and self-employed people all qualify, as do independent contractors. Businesses with 500 or fewer workers qualify, with some exceptions for certain industries that have specific limits set by SBA. The maximum loan is $10 million.
What’s available now for the nonpayroll expenses? What’s out there for a business that’s seen its market disappear because of travel restrictions or forced closures, like someone in the tourism industry?
The Economic Injury Disaster Loan is available now, Seppala said. It works better for non-payroll expenses. “The Economic Injury Disaster Loan is a loan that small businesses can apply for. If you are successful applying for that loan, you will be sent a check for $10,000 within three days from the SBA,” Seppala said. “It will get people $10,000 pretty quickly if they qualify for that loan.”
The interest rate for the EIDL loan is 3.75%.
“The EIDL is for working capital specifically and in the application is the SBA definition of working capital. Payroll is part of the worked capital definition. However, if you put payroll into your EIDL loan application and you take that loan, you can’t do the same thing with the Paycheck Protection Plan. You can’t double dip,” Seppala said.
The Payroll Protection Program is going to offer considerably more payroll help than the EIDL.
Repayment is deferred one year on Economic Injury Disaster Loans related to the pandemic. Previous EIDL loans are also deferred for a year.
Is there more than $10,000 in assistance available through EIDL? This is the kind of loan a business might get after its economy was wiped out for several months by a natural disaster, right?
Yes. Nelson said he’s working with a grocer on the border of Yellowstone National Park who has seen its extremely seasonal opportunity to turn a profit evaporate as the park is now closed.
SBA offers up to $2 million in assistance per small business through EIDL. The money can be used for paying accounts payable or fixed debts, as well as payroll. The loan is supposed to cover bills that can’t be paid because of the pandemic’s impact.
While the interest rate for for-profit businesses is 3.75%, nonprofits receive an interest rate of 2.75%. Borrowers have up to 30 years to pay the loans back.
There have also been steps taken to help borrowers with payments due on existing loans, right? The SBA is going to make loan payments for borrowers on existing Small Business Administration loans for up to six months, right? Gov. Steve Bullock announced that foreclosures and evictions were suspended and that late fees couldn’t be charged. The governor’s order was expected to last though at least April 24. How important is it the people who are able to make payments on mortgages and other loans still contact lenders to explain why payments aren’t coming?
“With the SBA program (for existing loans) there is some forgiveness,” Nelson said. “That’s a little bit different; that’s almost like grant money. But the deferments we’re talking about, loans with your mortgage company, your business loans with the bank, your obligation is not forgiven. It’s just deferred. If you communicate with your landlord, or your bank or your vendors, that two-way dialogue, that gets you lots of places. That means a lot in the business world to have open, good communications so that you can work jointly to solve the financial problem in front of you.”
Editor's note: At publication, the SBA was no longer accepting applications for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan funds. Congress may extend funding for those programs.
Small businesses face unique challenges every day, and require creative solutions to succeed.
Talk to one of our experienced commercial lenders today to help you reach your unique goals!
Economy unlikely to recover as rapidly as it collapsed
JOSH BOAK The Associated Press
BALTIMORE (AP) — President Donald Trump has been telling voters that the U.S. economy will leap back to life “like a rocket,” stronger than ever after its bout with the coronavirus.
But there is a reason economics is called the “dismal science.” There are emerging signs that any recovery will fail to match the speed and severity of the economic collapse that occurred in just a few weeks. The 2020 presidential and Senate elections likely will take place as the world’s largest economy is still attempting to climb back from the deadly outbreak.
“Anyone who assumes we’re going to get a sharp snapback in activity isn’t thinking about how consumers are going to feel. They’re going to be very cautious,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Markit. “Households and businesses have seen their finances deteriorate. People are buying groceries on their credit cards.”
To understand the consequences of a sudden negative shock on the economy, Behravesh studied how many people returned to flying after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“It took two and a half years for airline passenger traffic to go back to previous levels,” he said.
No longer able to campaign on a half-century low unemployment rate, Trump has begun to tell voters that he can quickly rebuild the economy. He said measures like the $2.2 trillion rescue package — with more money likely on the way — can send employment and economic growth to new highs.
Jefrey Pollock, a Democratic pollster, said voters will judge in November whether the Republican president has delivered an economic revival, and they will be taking a similar measure of incumbent members of Congress.
“The fact that we’re as partisan as ever doesn’t mean we’re destined to forgive a president who fails on the economy,” Pollock said. “This is a man who championed his economic abilities — and to me there is nothing to suggest that voters will forgive him, since he’s been front and center on the virus response since Day One.”
If his view holds, that plays to the advantage of likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden. But Biden will have to give voters a fuller idea of how he would boost the economy, Pollock said.
Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the situation as the U.S. economy being sideswiped by the “hidden enemy” of COVID-19, which he and his advisers initially downplayed in February and March and later suggested was impossible to foresee. His message to voters is that recovery came from the Harvard University economist Larry Summers, who served as a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama during the Great Recession, He suggested on Twitter that the U.S. economy would behave much as a beach town on Cape Cod, which closes in the winter and reopens around Memorial Day for a burst of summer activity.
Adding to the challenge is that political leaders cannot simply command an economic recovery to occur. The timing depends on the shared actions of millions of consumers and employers, said Paul Winfree, a former Trump White House official who is now director of economic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
his leadership will make the economy even stronger.
“Our Economy will BOOM, perhaps like never before!!!” Trump declared Wednesday on Twitter.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who has been leading the stimulus efforts, has said there will be “a very big bounce back,” though he noted that the gains could be uneven.
“Certain parts of the economy you’re going to see come back immediately,” Mnuchin said on the Fox Business Network. “Certain things are going to take a little bit longer.”
One of the arguments for a quick
“I don’t think we’re going to get out of this because of political leadership,” Winfree said in an email. “This isn’t WWII. Rather, things won’t turn around until a significant majority of people decide that we’ve done enough (privately and publicly) and have to move along. Hopefully, that coincides with the success of public health efforts.”
A strong economic rebound likely depends on people and companies being able to preserve their money, so that it can be spent and invested once the gloom begins to subside. The challenge now is that incomes are eroding, and that could limit the recovery.
Not only have 16.8 million Americans — roughly 1 in 10 workers — lost their jobs in the past three weeks. Workers have seen their hours slashed, have seen sales commissions disappear and have accepted salary cuts, such that incomes have declined for half of U.S. working households, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Children can no longer attend school, reducing the productivity of their parents. And on a regional basis, many state economies may take time to claw back what has been lost. Florida will need to bring back roughly 130 million tourists annually. The decisions of Texas employers will likely depend on crude oil climbing back above $30 to a point at which drilling and pumping is profitable.
Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom is an expert on uncertainty and believes the economy will end this year 10% smaller than it was at the start of 2020, a loss of nearly $2 trillion even with the $2.2 trillion rescue package.
The long-term outlook also has deteriorated, he added, in ways that could hurt the recovery.
“Working from home is creating a collapse in investment,” Bloom said. “All firms I have spoken to have canceled training, new product introductions and R&D projects, while at U.S. universities and laboratories unless you are working on COVID-19 you have stopped work. So innovation — the main driver of long-run U.S. growth — has stopped.”
Bloom has personally responded to the decline in an ominous way. He said he pulled his retirement funds and college savings from the stock market and placed them in interest-bearing accounts to wait out the storm.
