Collier County deciding on allocation of remaining CARES Act money

The pandemic has made it difficult to do many things, especially pay your bills, and now Collier County is examining how to spend more CARES Act money for small businesses and families.

In June, Collier County received a total of $67 million, $10 million of which was allocated to small businesses. But when you add up everything that’s been paid with payments in process, the county still has $22 million. The proposal for those remaining funds includes helping qualified small businesses and nonprofits pay off non-forgivable economic injury disaster loans, with a maximum of $25,000 per company.

Vann Ellison, CEO of St. Matthew’s House, says the CARES money his organization received provided $15 million in community services.

“When those businesses are hurting, the people that we serve are really injured, so we’re very grateful that those funds are available for small businesses that are going to employ people to make sure that they’re still able to be here, and that there’s jobs and an economic pathway out of poverty for the people we serve,” Ellison said. “Every dollar that has been given has actually multiplied itself several times. So a dollar to the CARES Act has kept people out of the hospital, has provided food, has provided the resources to distribute that food.”

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