St. Louis County Approves Plan To Distribute CARES Act Funding
St. Louis County has approved a plan to distribute $24.5 million in federal coronavirus aid funding, also known as the CARES Act.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY – St. Louis County has approved a plan to distribute $24.5 million in federal coronavirus aid funding, also known as the CARES Act. The goal is to give out the funds to help people and businesses that were impacted by the pandemic.
The funding’s purpose is to provide assistance to organizations that support individuals in the community who are disproportionately and most impacted by the pandemic.
The plan will distribute $6 million to small business assistance, $6 million for community assistance and $1.25 million for the logging industry.
Other funds will be allocated to cover costs the county has had in response to the pandemic and for cities and townships with populations of under 200 people.
“We’re really working to make sure how do we really support people and organizations who’ve been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” said Laura Birnbaum, the social services supervisor for St. Louis County. “We need our community organizations to be able to stay afloat to continue doing the work that they do.”
The community assistance program funds will be allocated to places like nursing homes, assisted living facilities and metal health and substance use disorder services.
The small business relief fund will be distributed in two phases – the first will start on August 24th and will last two weeks.
It is intended to provide relief for businesses and nonprofits with 25 or fewer full-time employees while providing the equivalent of a thousand dollars per employee. The second phase will start on Sept. 7th and lasts for another two weeks.
It will provide emergency grant assistance of up to $50,000 to businesses and non-profits with 100 or fewer full-time employees for expenses related to COVID-19.
“Our goal even though some people could argue that 25 employees is not super small or phase two up to 100 employees isn’t real small, our goal is to get it to as many different businesses and reimburse them for the unexpected COVID-19 related expenditures,” said Matthew Johnson, the planning and community development director for St. Louis County.
The application process for the community assistance program will be available in late August. For more information or if you have any questions about the programs, email CARES@stlouiscountymn.gov.
