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Cora Sheffield’s spa in Westwood Shopping Center had barely been open four months when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“It was a really bad time to open,” she said in a recent interview.
Sheffield was forced to close The Camille Spa & Wax Studio for several months, complying with continuous lockdown orders and restrictions that prevented her from offering any of her services. Though she’d started with one other employee, Sheffield said, she was forced to lay the woman off and hasn’t been able to rehire since.
For Sheffield and dozens of other small-business owners in Cumberland County, the Small Business Economic Assistance Program presented an opportunity for recovery. Funded by money from the American Rescue Plan Act, the county-led program was created to help small businesses with low- to moderate-income employees retain and/or grow their staff in the wake of the pandemic, according to Tye Vaught, the county’s chief of staff.
Vaught said via email last month that the program, which has now gone through two phases of funding, applies to businesses with full-time employees making less than or equal to $37,350 annually.
“In both phases, we had a very diverse application pool,” he said.
How does it work?
The program provides participants with reimbursements for specific types of expenses, Vaught said.
“Since it is a reimbursement program it basically gives businesses credit for funds spent on employee salaries and occupancy,” he said. “These are expenses that a business owner already pays to retain employees and a business location.”
According to county documents, business owners spend money monthly for approved areas of expense and submit documentation to the county showing what they spent and how they spent it. The county then provides reimbursement for the expenses.
Vaught said that businesses had to employ at least one full-time, low- to moderate-income employee, be located in Cumberland County and have been in operation on or before March 3, 2021, to qualify for the program. In addition, businesses had to commit to continue to employ low- to moderate-income workers for at least one year after their final reimbursement, he said.
“Contracts are based on a ‘program year,’ so typically the reimbursements will continue for up to 12 months after contract execution,” Vaught said.
Applications for the first phase of the program began on Feb. 8, 2022, and closed March 31, 2022, Vaught said. The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners approved awards to various small businesses on June 20, 2022, Aug. 15, 2022, and Nov. 21, 2022, he said.
On Sept. 18, the board approved $219,623 in additional funding for 15 businesses that had participated in the first phase of the program and $811,118 in initial funding for 21 businesses who applied to participate in July.
During his presentation to the commissioners, Vaught noted that about $400,000 in Phase I funds had yet to be used by any businesses. He later said in his email that 12 businesses had not accessed any of the money they were awarded and would be contacted by the end of September to determine if they still wanted to participate in the program.
Some owners unhappy
Sheffield said she believed some businesses hadn’t touched their funds from the county because, like her, they didn’t know what they were getting into with the program.
“When I talked to other business owners, they all thought when they applied that it was a grant, and, like me, it wasn’t until they came in to sign their documents that they found out it was a reimbursement,” she said.
Sheffield said she applied for the program in February 2022 after learning about it from a client and hearing an advertisement on the radio. She didn’t find out until the following November that she had been approved because her conditional offer letter was accidentally sent to the wrong email in July, she said.
“It’s just a big cluster of confusion,” Sheffield said. “If I had to do it all over again, I would have never applied for the grant.”
According to county documents, Sheffield’s spa received $33,500 during the first phase and $3,850 in the second phase for a total of $37,350.
Sheffield said she had requested an additional $16,500 so she could hit the $50,000 mark, which she felt would have been a significant help.
“A lot of us are struggling,” she said. “It’s just a lot of stress and a lot of extra energy that I have to focus in order to receive this money.”
Sheffield said she finds the program stressful because every month she has to submit her list of expenses, and then wait for reimbursement, which she finds to be inconsistent.
“One month I’ll submit documents and receive payment within a week, and then a lot of other months, it would be like three weeks, four weeks before I received payment,” she said. “Right now, it’s been about four weeks and I’m waiting for August’s reimbursement. I haven’t even paid September rent yet. So, I’m just kind of waiting for that angry email from my landlord being like, ‘Um, what’s going on here?’”
Sheffield said she also experienced confusion and miscommunication around her initial documentation, which included outlining the “scope of work” her reimbursements would be used to pay for.
“Each time I would submit my scope of work, I would have to fix it to make it what legal wanted,” she said. “I went from, I wanted to allocate the money in these three areas to only two because they wouldn’t even accept what I wanted to spend the money on; training for, like, continuing education classes, learning new treatments and stuff like that.”
Vaught acknowledged that not all business owners had been happy with the program.
“As with any program, there have been both success stories and lessons learned,” he said. “Initially, some recipients experienced a learning curve in submitting complete documentation. However, when businesses provided complete documentation, the process was more straightforward and streamlined.”
‘It’s actually been good’
Another business owner says she’s had a positive experience with the program.
Laura Hardy, a Hope Mills native, owns two small businesses, and her consulting group, Hardy Group Consulting, received $15,000 through the initial phase of the program.
“It’s actually been good,” she said recently. “It meant a lot to be able to recapture some of the resources that I was not able to get during COVID. I just submit my paperwork and they submit reimbursement. It’s smooth. You wouldn’t even believe how easy it is.”
Like Sheffield, Hardy’s business started just before the pandemic in December 2019 when she incorporated her consulting group.
“It was difficult, but I was able to transition and figure out how to work within this new world,” Hardy said.
She said she submitted her application in spring 2022.
“It took some time to iron out all the kinks,” she said. “Anything I had questions about, I called, and they’d get me to someone that would help me and make sure that I submitted the information correctly.”
Hardy was surprised to learn that she had been approved for an additional $3,000 in the second phase, saying that she was grateful for the support from her community.
“A lot of times, people feel alone, but all you have to do is just kind of holler out, ‘Hey, I need some help,’ and there’s plenty of people there to help, not only in government but also in our business community here,” she said.
Vaught said the county believes the program has been a success thus far.
“It has enabled businesses with strong pre-pandemic track records that were adversely impacted to rebuild their staffing capacity,” he said.
Government watchdog reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at ABSolomon@gannett.com.
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