 Good afternoon everybody. My name is Adam Chapter Lane. I work as the town manager for the town of Arlington and welcome to our first virtual town forum. This will hopefully be the first in a series where we'll focus on different topics. We may even repeat this topic to make sure that we're reaching as many people as possible. Today we want to talk, I want to talk very briefly about some of our general efforts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we want to spend the bulk of our time having Jenny Ray talk about the programs that we are we're putting together as well as those that we're helping facilitate with other layers of government for small businesses and nonprofits. So generally I'll say we have really been following the guidance and working through our Board of Health and our Department of Health and Human Services in our response to this pandemic. All decisions we're making are based on the best public health information that we have in trying to respect, excuse me, protect as many residents as possible and break the lines of transmission of COVID-19. We of course understand that these decisions that have been made from the public health perspective are having significant economic ramifications and that's going to be a big focus of what we talk about today. So Jenny will talk a little bit about the agenda, but what I do want to mention is once we get through Jenny's presentation we will then allow a question and answer period and I'll be asking everybody to use the question and answer function through Zoom and we'll then go through those questions and answer as many as we can within the time allotted. So I will wrap up my remarks now and I will turn it over to Jenny to walk through the presentation. Thank you so much, Adam. If you would advance to that next slide. Our first technical difficulty, there we go. Afternoon everybody and thank you Adam for opening this discussion. I'm Jenny Raid, I'm the director of planning and community development for the town of Arlington and I just want to introduce you first to the agenda for this forum today. The first thing is just to explain the objectives. Really we want to be able to provide you with updates to Arlington small businesses and the nonprofit community on what the town has been doing in response to COVID-19. To be able to answer any questions and to hear from forum participants about the challenges that they are currently facing. We're hoping that we can gather a lot of information from the people who are participating today so that it will inform future forms that we hope to provide to you in the future. So the first part obviously was our opening remarks and an update on town operations from Adam. I'm going to provide you with an update on information resources that are available for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. We're going to have Q&A with and comments from the small business and nonprofit community. Then we'll wrap it up with the closing remarks and some discussion about potential future virtual meetings. So if you would go back to that first slide please Adam. So just a standing of my department we do planning and community development for the town. Members from my department have been actively working with the leadership team who've been working on this emergency response to carry out the town's COVID-19 response providing supports and information to the business community creating engagement opportunities and spaces for people to connect while they're at home and helping to ease the burden of the departments that are involved in the emergency response. The department will also be administering additional federal funds which I'll talk about that will be directed to initiatives to help address those most in need right now particularly those facing needs with rental and business assistance. Allie Carter who is actually on the line and will be joining us during our Q&A she's the town's Economic Development Coordinator and she'll be joining us so that she can also answer some of the questions as they emerge through this forum. I really want to thank her for all the work that she did in helping us to develop this forum and also developing the business resource page on the town's website. There are a few important points to note before I outline the resources that are available to Arlington businesses and nonprofits. The situation continues to be rapidly developing from both a public health and an economic perspective. The state and federal government continues to respond it is a bit slow but they are intending to provide increased resources and financial support in this response. There will be new sources of support to report at future forums including from the state so if you could now go to the website with the town's Economic Development Business Resources. For you who are familiar with the town's website on the main landing page there is a button that leads to the town's COVID response and also directly goes to the business resource support page. The online resources include a curated list of businesses that remain open for example retailers that are accepting online orders selling gift cards and other things and as you may know of course Governor Charlie Baker has issued an emergency order that required all businesses and organizations that do not provide COVID-19 essential services to close their physical workplaces and facilities to workers customers and to the public. These businesses are encouraged to continue operations remotely of course and some of them have continued to do that and others have made other business decisions. Governor Baker is to communicate with which essential businesses remain open the hours that they're open and the contact information that's available among other details if they have been provided as part of that. The town via the Department of Health and Human Services continues to provide detailed operational guidance to essential businesses Additionally a new initiative called Amazing Arlington which is a community engagement initiative primarily is launching new resources to help people maintain connections and support the local business community. It's here on this forum but continues to remain available by phone and email information will be made available for aid relief and economic security act known as CARES the CARES Act billion dollars available to small business administration loans. I want to highlight a couple of those opportunities that are available right as the paycheck protection program. This is a 100% federally guaranteed loan directed at supporting the retention of employees. Loans are up to 10 million dollars with a 0.5 interest rate and a two-year maturity. There are no payments for the first six months. There are many organizations not just businesses that qualify for this program support. Businesses, nonprofits, veterans organizations, sole proprietors, self-employed individuals and independent contractors with 500 or fewer employees are all eligible to apply. The program is now open and applications must be submitted by June 30th through any existing SBA 7A lender or through any participating federally insured institution or federally insured credit institution. The loan will be forgiven if all employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities. As I mentioned the program is currently active and it's retroactive from February 15th 2020 so employers can rehire recently laid off employees through June 30th. The other program is called the Economic Injury Disaster Loan which is a part of the Economic Injury Disaster Loan. The advance however is a $10,000 instructions on how to submit that application for both the loan and the loan can be used for any immediate business expenses and does not need to be repaid. Potential SBA opportunity is an emergency grant program that's available to provide a small infusion of cash less than the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Advance which is tied to the other loan program. Also the small business debt relief program can help businesses keep up with required payments or current or potential SBA loans. If you have not done so already we encourage you to register for updates through the SBA at sba.gov slash updates. Additionally the town locally is looking to develop an emergency program for micro enterprises serving low to moderate income employees. The town receives $1 million annually in community development block grant funds which come directly from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The CARES Act as I mentioned earlier also provided supplemental funding to states and local governments in the form of CDBG funds. $2 million are expected for entitlement communities including Arlington. Arlington will be receiving an approximately $650,000 which will be available immediately upon the contract. A portion of these funds will be devoted to serving the small business community as well as nonprofit institutions for serving low to moderate income individuals. More details about this program will be forthcoming and we anticipate releasing them next week. We will be joining with Worcester, Fitchburg, Cambridge and Boston in this response to serve the small business community and institutions that provide critical infrastructure in normal times. Additional resources are available to nonprofit cultural and arts organizations that I also want to talk about. Last week the Massachusetts Cultural Council launched two COVID-19 relief efforts to help those individual artists and cultural organizations to address the economic impact associated with the coronavirus pandemic and associated social distancing measures. As we know from our arts and culture action plan there are many individual artists that operate in Arlington as well as host many cultural institutions and museums and other operations that we all treasure. The COVID-19 relief fund for individuals is the first of them that I want to talk about. This relief fund supports individuals whose creative practices and incomes are adversely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Unrestricted grants of $1,000 are available to individual artists and independent teaching artists, humanists and scientists in Massachusetts who have lost income derived from their work as a direct result of COVID-19 related cancellations and closures. The program guidelines and online application are available today and the application deadline is April 22nd. On the screen there are a couple of there are a few deadlines that are coming up that everybody should be aware of. The one that I just mentioned is also on the screen. The St. Parber's COVID-19 initiative for cultural organizations is more broadly available to support cultural nonprofits to encourage access to COVID-19 assistance offered through the federal government and to also help organizations understand their current financial challenges and craft a responsible strategy going forward. Additionally the gaming mitigation program which is also noted on the screen has a very very quick deadline that's this Friday April 17th and this is available to all performing arts organizations who present touring shows and artists are encouraged to review the program guidelines to determine if they may be eligible to apply. The non-profit finance fund is another opportunity providing webinars and online resources coupled with capacity building coaching services and many other opportunities to assist nonprofits in preparing plans and making decisions particularly during this very challenging financial and economic time. The National Council of Nonprofits is another entity that also provides these resources as well as the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. Many of these resources are noted on the town's website in relationship to our business resource supports during COVID-19. Lastly the two sources that I wanted to mention would also be the COVID-19 relief fund which is a fund that is supporting frontline health care professionals, first responders and other essential workers who need assistance, households who are disproportionately affected by the impact of COVID-19, people facing food insecurity and others. I also want to note that there is currently a bill that is awaiting passage hopefully by the Senate which would enact an addiction and foreclosure moratorium which is really critical at this time especially given the fact that deadlines are coming up for people's rent and mortgage payments. There are many different elements to this bill and we are hoping that our delegation will act swiftly in order to address these measures and support people in the community. I will note that we have been working with our regional partners as well as our state and federal delegations in order to best serve this community. We look forward to the conversation ahead with you and we are hoping to answer your questions. Thank you so much. Thank you Jenny. So I'll remind everybody for anybody who's joined since we started if they have questions if they could input those questions into the question and answer function we'll read those and between myself Jenny and Allie do our best to answer those questions. I did see one attendee had their hand raised but if they could please please write their question into the question and answer function we very much appreciate that. So the first question is can you talk about the best and worst case scenarios for gradual slash rollout opening of the town's larger small businesses specifically venues such as the region the capital and Arlington friends of the drama which rely on large public gatherings to survive it's becoming increasingly probably increasingly problematic to schedule reschedule postpone cancel future events with such uncertainty any information even if preliminary would be helpful. So I'm I'm happy to take my best crack that Jenny and Allie and if you want to follow up on my answer that would be great. So what I'll what I'll say to that is it's it is very hard for us to provide a substantive or fact-based answer to that question. I think the best answer I can give is as many of us probably read in the globe either yesterday or this morning that a group of northeastern governors as well as some west coast governors are beginning to collaborate on putting together a combined or a comprehensive plan for the gradual reopening of the economies in various states and in contiguous states and I think that makes a lot of sense because if it's one state acts faster or slower than another it could counteract the the good efforts that have already been put in place in terms of social distance. So I I can't honestly tell anybody when I think larger small businesses especially places that as described depend on larger gatherings when they might be able to reopen but what I can say is I think based on those discussions that will be starting at the state level that over the course of the next let's say 15 to 30 days especially leading up to May 4th which right now is the date the governor has the non-essential non-essential business closure in place we'll start to learn more and more so I don't I hate to not have an answer because I know how critical it is for some of our again larger small businesses in Arlington that are so critical and important to Arlington but as we learn more as more data becomes available and as state leaders begin to advise in regards to these measures we'll we'll do our best to keep the town and the business owners informed. So the next question is do we know if there are additional funds coming for EIDL it seems like the ten thousand dollar grants have already been greatly reduced. I can take that one Adam. Thanks Adam. Sure so I think though there's been some issues with how the various aspects of the CARES Act have rolled out and I think some of the messaging that came out initially was a little bit confusing to folks because I think many folks interpreted it and I did myself as that businesses could get a ten thousand dollar grant for applying when they applied and then you know then there was the rest of it. It more specifically is a cap at ten thousand dollars and it's one thousand dollars per employee up to ten thousand. I don't think that was a change I think that was actually a change only in language with the realization that people have misunderstood. I've heard that there's already a sense that folks know that what's happening is probably not enough and they're planning for more but right now there are no detailed proposals about any expansion of what is in the CARES Act as of right now. Thank you Allie. The next question is I'm hearing from my business owner that funds are not being made available yet specifically by leader bank or TD bank and he has had that cooperated by his account. Are we aware that any funds have been given to businesses locally yet? I can answer that one as well so I have been on calls at least once a week with the Massachusetts chapter of the SBA and they for the past two weeks have been saying that they are dispersing funds they're working through them so none of this is happening as quickly as anyone wants it to. Even speaking with local bank managers they are overwhelmed with the number of applications they have something on the order of like a hundred times more applications than they usually have in the pipeline is what they're working with and this isn't a national bank this is one of our small local banks so everyone is struggling to keep a pace with the level of need. Having said that I have not personally heard from any Arlington business owner that they have started receiving any of their funds from CARES Act support that they've requested but the SBA has been assuring us that it is starting and the money is flowing hopefully we'll see that on the local level soon. Thank you Allie. So there are no other questions in the Q&A form right now you've got plenty of time if anybody look at that one just came in so regarding the EIDL loans that were announced yesterday and that the cap per applicant would be 15,000 the loans were to be up to two million so it's clear that the demand has been far greater than the funds allocated to this program Allie would you like to comment on that as you share that sense? Yeah and there's been many of you've probably seen these articles but there's been some pushback a little bit too from people that it's not it's a sort of square peg in a round hole that you know particularly for PPP the paycheck protection program that people can't actually bring their employees back to work right now they could but then they may have to lay them off again in another eight weeks and since you're supposed to spend 75% of that funding on payroll and only 25% is meant for other expenses it's almost setting people up to misuse it and then therefore not have it be a loan I'm sorry a grant but to have it be a loan if you use it correctly the grant the loan is forgiven and turns into a grant so I think there are people working on correcting the programs that are out there and whatever comes next will be a little more responsive but the whole thing is moving so fast I think when these programs were being developed two or three weeks ago or maybe four they were responding to what they saw on the ground at that time and things have changed so much then but you're correct there's just there's more need out there thank you Allie I see uh someone in the q&a said they have two questions that I'm assuming they're typing them in right now if we want to hold on for just a moment I just could add the last question a little bit or just to expand on the fact that it is a very evolving situation and that once things do reopen there's going to be a new economic impact to think about and that we're going to have to be pivoting to think about the sources of support and the resources that are needed in order to be able to roll that out and reopen and I think that our state uh delegation as well as our federal delegation need to be aware of the issues that people are facing in order to be able to reopen essentially um so any any information or feedback that you can provide directly to Allie would be very useful to us and also be able to communicate that up um so that we can advocate on your behalf and get the resources more quickly and also be able to protect you as you reopen so two more uh two questions have come in uh uh a business owner saying no one I know has received any funds uh and I applied as early as possible for the PPP and over two weeks ago for the 10K EIDL grant could the town put out a request uh for any business owners to let the town know if any money does come through so that we can then share it with other business owners because it would be helpful for business owners to know if others are beginning to receive it yeah I would love to hear back from anyone if anyone's willing to share that information with me I'd be um so grateful for it um that's actually so much of what I've learned about these programs is through your experiences and hearing your stories about how it's been somewhat problematic applying for it uh waiting on hold forever for customer service and then getting disconnected at the end of you know an hour and a half wait um I cannot imagine how frustrating that is um so please share those stories with me and if I start hearing good things or helpful hints I can share that with other folks I want to apologize in advance because my cat is coming up on me I don't mean to make light of the situation but if you're watching this video I'm being approached from the rear by a cat who might jump on me sorry I just want to uh well while there's a cat interference um I just want to put a plug in actually for Ali's survey that it's still posted on the town's website um that was really something that we pulled together early on and it may not be as applicable or relevant right now but it's still important for us to understand what you're going through in as a local business owner or even a non-profit organization so we can better understand how to help you but also Ali will be working with Kelly Linema to help to update that that survey um to uh be a little bit more current and also future thinking thank you Jenny don't worry about the cat Ali it's all this is just part of this new world order we have here um so we have three more questions that have come in one is regarding the EIDL loan um do we know if one can accept uh up to the $10,000 grant but not accept the loan and also uh Jenny mentioned that the PPP loan had five percent interest um but I read that it was one percent uh could we clarify that um I don't believe I can check and confirm this but I do not believe that you can apply for the EIDL loan and then just take the grant I'm I'm not really sure I I know that you can get the grant even if you're rejected for the loan application um but I don't know if you get the grant and then you're offered the loan application you say no thanks I'm just gonna keep I'm not sure how that would work I can find out um but I early on um two or three weeks ago I was encouraging people that even if you didn't technically um qualify for the loan that it was good to apply for it anyway because it put you in the pipeline and if things were um opening up because there was more need then you know then the fund could serve that you might become eligible um so I can try and get a sense of folks from the SBA what's coming down the line and what would happen if you were got the grant were offered the loan but then rejected it so I can follow up about that and how about the interest rate I another participant has said that the PPP loan first came out at a half percent and then was changed to one percent um Allie or Jenny do you have that information in front of me I have said it's not supposed to be more than four percent but I think that it varies depending upon the lender that you go the lending institution that you go to I'm not I'm not um you know I'm reading basically a comparison between the economic injury disaster loan and the payment at paycheck protection loan program and the comparison is that the interest rate can go not more than four percent on the paycheck protection loan and for the economic injury disaster loan it's three point seven five percent for businesses and two point seven five percent for a non-profit organization qualifying I might add um there are there are certain eligible non-profit organization another question's come in um if this is a forum this this forum that we're holding right now that will continue will we have more information that we'll be willing to share about actual distribution of funds by banks to Arlington businesses and I think you know a similar question was asked and answered I think we're willing to do that right I think we'll do our best to gather that information talk with business owners talk with banks and when we offer another one of these forums possibly next week hopefully we could have more information it would be it would be nice if there was good news to share at that point I think that at a minimum what I would say that by next week and we can certainly speak with lenders in our community and perhaps beyond in greater Boston because Allie is participating in this regional initiative with other folks in similar positions in other communities in greater Boston um so I think at a minimum we could find out what types of activity have occurred with lending institution what kinds of inquiries they're seeing how quickly things are turning around and also maybe learn a little bit about the challenges that those institutions are having in just getting those programs initiated and deployed that's part of I think the challenges we're all learning how to do some new things and I think there's there's that part of the story as well I would say that later on it would be very helpful to have the information about who does receive the loans in the end and hopefully at some point in the future we would be able to report that very accurately thank you Jenny another question a small business uh is any business under 500 employees uh why don't they address small businesses with under 50 employees with funding have either of you heard any talk at the federal or state level about a more targeted smaller business funding um it starts at 500 because the sba is you know a federal program and it's building on the infrastructure they already have in place and so on at the federal level um I know this doesn't translate well here but on the federal level a small business has 500 or fewer employees so they've just actually um really lowered the floor a lot of who can be eligible for these funds um by opening it up to sole proprietors and very small micro businesses um with the cdbg funds that we have available or will be having available um through the town um those will go to micro enterprises which are businesses that have five or fewer employees and the business owner themselves is a low to moderate income earning individual so we're trying to do that on the local level great and either alley or jenny um I know we're meeting with the cdbg subcommittee on wednesday to discuss that program and make recommendations but can you talk a little bit about um how that process will play out and when we think we might have a program to actually roll out we are meeting tomorrow with the cdbg subcommittee to review the plan for how to rate how to um program those funds we also don't have a contract yet from HUD but we anticipate that we will receive that in the next couple of weeks um and electronically so that it can be expedited my sense is that we will go to the select board in the next couple of weeks and right after that be able to make funds available um that that's my expectation I would say though at the earliest date that we can really get things up and running is likely after the start of May um you know it's it's really contingent upon getting the contract having a review and filing you know having the necessary timeline for public input um which is still required of course as part of even though it is an emergency we do have a required timeline before we can make things final submit the paperwork to HUD and with all said and done I would guess um but that said we we anticipate having another one of these forms hopefully next week so we can share more details about how that program would operate and we would still be able to actually start thinking about um educating people about how they would fill out the paperwork what information would be needed so we can get things rolling right away as soon as possible for people so people essentially would be lined up and ready to go as soon as funds become available great thank you Jenny uh we have a comment um which I'll gladly read since thanks for doing this Adam uh God bless you and your staff stay safe and healthy and joyful and we will get through this hang on so I I second that thank you to to Jenny and Allie and Joan and ACMI and everybody who's been part of this so thank thank you for submitting that um another question perhaps at the end of today's session you could let us know if there will be other virtual town hall meetings their topics and how do we learn about them thank you so I guess as opposed to waiting till the end I'll say it now and I'll say it again when we close we do plan on having there be a series of these virtual town forums we were deciding to call them virtual town forums instead of town halls to be clear that we're not actually going to meet in town hall which is sad but the is the state of our reality right now so uh yeah our plan is to really try to focus on three subject matter areas small businesses and nonprofits like we're talking about today general public health uh slash town operations focused and then we're also having discussions with the school department about whether or not we could offer an education or school department focused town forum and what we would plan to do is try to schedule more of these likely for next week we'll post them on the town website we'll send them out via town notices we'll send them out to local media and try to make them as available to as wide a group of folks in town as possible so we've had a fairly good attendance here we actually have about 25 25 residents on our 25 residents and business owners on right now in addition to the panelists so we'll take that as a good start and yeah we definitely want to continue to do this to try to provide a back and forth between town government and residents and business owners as we go forward so there's two more questions have come in one is have you heard anything about grants that could become available for businesses carrying small business loans that are not federally backed um jenny you can correct me from wrong but the the cdbg uh grants that we're looking at doing we don't pay attention to people's um there's no consideration of people having outstanding loans with that application i would not work against you in order to receive this grant funding yep sorry i'm not aware of other sources of some which you know i think you'd have to go through the various grant guidelines to better understand how they view other source other loans or liabilities um in evaluating whether or not another question would we be willing to set up virtual meetings similar to the ones that ali does with central merchants so that business owners can talk to each other this question is saying she'd love to connect with other people so ali what do you think could we put together zoom meetings for the the business groups within town yes um yes i'm actually heartened to receive that question and that's not the first time i've gotten that in the past week um just for folks who may not be aware i meet on a monthly basis with business owners in all of our three main business districts um pretty informally just to keep up on things that are happening in town and have um just a regular exchange of information between what the business owners are seeing in the community issues they're confronted with anything from parking to you know public works type issues um just or if there's a major project we have going on we just get together and talk um and we need to start doing that again just in this new format so i plan on um this week scheduling those out um so stay tuned um to your email i've been emailing the business owners a lot i have a pretty comprehensive list um that said it's not complete so i hope um when this when we're wrapping up in my email addresses out there if you are not receiving emails for me email me and i will add you to the list go ahead jenny i just want to note that um we are actively working with the our linkedin chamber of commerce and i think that working in partnership with them the chamber has been reaching out to chamber members as well as non-members um very much so through their virtual forums that they've been hosting pretty much every monday um that content has been posted on their webpage for anybody who's interested in learning more about those resources um but i will also note that we do intend to have a state of the town which is something that we've done in the past um and that'll will be another forum where we're sharing information about where we are with current affairs as well as future affairs about the town in relationship to the business community thank you jenny so there are right now no other questions have come in so i think we can probably start to wrap up um jenny and ali do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to share um just that if uh if it's not too much trouble to put back on the screen the contact uh just to to again plug that ali is a wonderful resource in the community and is available to answer questions and guide people to resources and provide support as well as that lock the executive director at the chamber um there's also a nima hotline that might be of interest to people who have uh direct concerns and you know they may be redirected to another resource but um it's a it's a good opportunity right now during this crisis to reach out to that particular hotline as well and i just want to say thank you very much uh to adam and to ali and to acmi as well as joan roman for helping us to host this forum um and that we will continue to communicate additional information that becomes available both through the town's website through the town notices and any other social media that we can put out there as well as in a future forum and i look forward to talking with people in the future and seeing people again thank you jenny how about you ellie uh yeah um i just want to thank everyone who is participating today um and to jenny and adam joan and acmi and beth at the chamber and anyone who's called me or emailed me um feel free to contact me it really um is so helpful to keep the lines of communication open i i can't help you unless um you let me know what's going on so um thank you all i know it's a really hard time and just um please hang in there um and ask for help like i know we all need it but ask for help like right away um so we have time to try and figure something out for you or connect you with the right person or resource um or whatever but uh hang in there you guys are awesome i know you're working so hard um and i really appreciate you all thanks thank you ellie uh and i'll close uh really echoing the same uh thank you to jenny thank you to ellie thank you to jone thank you to the team at acmi who have just been amazing throughout this and helping us get public meetings aired and meetings like this available to the public through multiple multiple media channels uh and thank you to all of you who are joining today hopefully this can be the first of many hopefully we can continue to get more uh more and uh wider and more diverse audience um stimulate more questions more engagement and to echo what ellie just said um we do understand just how challenging these times are for you in the business community and um though our means might be limited we are definitely willing to do anything that we can do to try to help you get through these times so whether it be joining us with this next virtual town forum or emailing ellie or myself or beth or jenny or whoever might be please feel free to reach out we we're here to support as we best can um so that we all come out of this we all come out of this together so with that uh let's let's wrap up this first virtual town forum again thank you to our panelists as well as our participants and we'll be getting another one scheduled hopefully next week and we'll uh leave we look forward to connecting again thank you everybody