Knox businesses will soon be able to apply for COVID-19 response grants from the city, but some of those hit particularly hard may not qualify. The city was recently awarded $250,000 in federal funding through the state’s COVID-19 Response Program. That money will be used “to provide working capital to local businesses for job retention.”
But for many salons and barbershops that technically rent out their spaces to individual stylists, that funding will be unavailable because they don’t actually have any employees as defined by the IRS. Those businesses have been forced to close completely for well over a month.
The issue came up during Monday’s public hearing on the city’s grant application. Kankakee-Iroquois Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Edwin Buswell explained that since the funding is tied to job retention, independent contractors and business owners with no employees are excluded, under federal rules.
“If you’re a sole proprietor and you have no employees, unless you’re set up as a corporation where you get a paycheck and a W-2, then you wouldn’t qualify for the program,” Buswell said.
He said he’d keep talking to state officials to see if there’s any way those businesses could qualify.
Mayor Dennis Estok said the city should have an application ready sometime next week for businesses to fill out. He said it will have various questions that will help a committee of city council members and others determine how much money each of them will get.
“You might have a business that only has one employee or two employees, and then you might have another business that has 10,” Estok explained. “And there’s different circumstances. Some of these businesses were forced to shut down, period. Some of them got to do a curbside. So we want to make sure we’re fair to everybody on the awards.”
The application will also include household income surveys for employees to fill out, since at least 51 percent of the retained jobs should be for those with low to moderate incomes. As of Monday, Estok said Knox hadn’t received its $250,000 yet, and the grant agreement still had to be signed.
Meanwhile, Pulaski County is looking to launch a similar relief program for small businesses. The county commissioners Monday agreed to let Community Development Commission Executive Director Nathan Origer apply for up to $250,000 from the COVID-19 Response Program.
