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Coronavirus
0000017b-652b-d50a-a3ff-f7efb02e0000KPCW's COVID-19 news coverage for Summit County and Wasatch County, Utah. 0000017b-652b-d50a-a3ff-f7efb02f0000You can also visit the Utah Department of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization websites for additional information.

Utah Gives Six Million Dollars In Small Business Loans, Preparing To Give Out Six More

Scott G Winterton, Deseret News, Pool photo

 Last week Utah approved half of the 1,000 applications they received for small business loans.

Utah's small business bridge loan program is targeted to businesses with fewer than 50 employees and awards 0% interest loans for five years, with the first payment due one year after the loan is received. The loans range from $5,000 to $20,000 but are no more than three months operating expenses. 
1,000 businesses submitted their applications in time for the first round of funding. In all 6.1 million dollars were awarded to 502 businesses. Executive Director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development Val Hale explains the criteria for how they determined who received the first round of funding. 

“The number of employees,” Hale continued. “Whether there are multiplier effects to their businesses. The impact that they have in their community. We had a team of about 25. Each of the awardees was reviewed about five times through the process, awarded a score. The evaluators are people from the private sector, from the banking industry, from GOED and from other state agencies. We've had a really good team.” 

Round two for funding opened Monday and will close Thursday at noon. Hale said those who did not receive funding in the first round, will have their application automatically resubmitted in the second round. 

“It's difficult when you have as many people who’ve applied for the limited funds that we have,” Hale explained. “That person, his or her business, will be resubmitted to the second round of funding and may still get funded. We just simply don't have sufficient funding to fund all of the businesses. I wish that there were opportunities to do that but it’s just the way it is.” 

Nonprofits can also apply for funding this round. 5.9 million dollars in funding will be made available, with Workers Compensation Fund providing one million and the state providing the rest. Links to the application can be found here.

Hale says the Governor’s approach has been that public health and economic welfare should not be considered mutually exclusive from each other. 

“We've had success in both areas,” Hale said. “This has been an extremely trying time for many in our business community and we hope that by getting the health part of it taken care of as well, we can come out more quickly than we would have otherwise.” 

Utah Department of Health epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn said they are working with the governor’s office to determine specific measures to track in order to know when to open up the economy safely. 

“Things we're looking at include the rate of cases, we want to see a steady decline in our growth rate,” Dunn continued. “We also want to maintain our capacity to be able to test anybody who needs testing, but also continue contact tracing, isolating, and quarantining individuals who need to have that happen as well. All of those factors will be considered when we're looking at policies to reopen pieces of our economy.” 

Dunn says the growth rate of the virus has been declining over the past few days but because of the two-week incubation period of the virus the state is forced to wait two weeks in order to make any assumptions.

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Coronavirus GOEDCOVID-19
KPCW reporter David Boyle covers all things in the Heber Valley as well as sports and breaking news.