Stillwater City Council approves COVID-19 Business Grants

(STILLWATER, OKLAHOMA / October 20, 2020) –  Many of our community’s small businesses are facing an unprecedented economic disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To help, Stillwater City Council, working with the Stillwater Chamber of Commerce, created Stillwater Small Business Assistance Program. This program, which council approved on Monday, Oct. 19, will assist businesses who need help reopening or have other financial needs. Applications are available now.

“We know our neighbors need help,” Mayor Will Joyce said, “so the City of Stillwater is committed to doing everything we can to support and preserve our local businesses,”

City council asked City Manager Norman McNickle and Chamber CEO Justin Minges to explore ways in which they could make a difference. The result is a new grant program that moved the funding that the City received from the CARES act reimbursement into a $500,000 grant pool. Grants will remain available until the funding is depleted.

McNickle said, “Helping local businesses stay in business is critical to everyone in our community.”

The guidelines and approval process for Stay Open Stillwater are outlined on the Chamber’s website at www.growstillwater.org/grants.

Program details are as follows:

• Grants up to $5,000 for qualifying small businesses
• Fewer than 50 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees and annual income for 2019 less than $10 million
• The business must be located within the Stillwater corporate city limits
• The business must provide evidence of at least a 25% revenue shortfall between March through May 2020 compared to designated periods from 2019–2020

The Chamber will focus on business-to-business outreach to ensure businesses know about the availability of the grant opportunity; while the City Manager’s Office will review and approve the applications.

“If you have questions about the application process, let us know,” Minges said. “We are here to make sure businesses get the funding they need.”

Mayor Joyce is pleased to see the program move forward, “Not only are locally-owned stores job-creators, they build vibrant, strong communities and recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into our local economy.” He also stressed that another way to help Stillwater’s business community was to shop local, especially during the upcoming holiday season.

For the latest information on COVID-19, with details on all that the City of Stillwater is doing to keep its residents safe, visit  http://stillwater.org/page/breaking-news