08/04/2023
We do not love sharing bad news on Facebook, but we have some unfortunate news to share. We, and 30 other small local businesses, were recently honored to say that we were awarded funding through Moline, IL - Official City Government BOOST forgivable loan program. We were and still would be excited to use these funds to bring on staff including production & customer service teams (7-10 people), increase our inventory, improve our community and better serve our customers in a much better way than our current 3 man overburdened team has been able to. We love being located in Moline and want to support and grown in this community. We had gone through all of the motions, had seen delay after delay - originally being told funding would be weeks away in May but here we are 90 days later and the award is set to happen August 11th.
However, we were told two days ago, via the city of moline's page that the award of our small business and every small business on the list was reduced to half of what they were originally promised. Now, we are told to go back to these employees and all these people we made commitments to that the amount is half and that we won't be able to do what we had hoped. We were told that the money wasn't there to give as promised to all of us but when a large corporation like Walmart walks in the concessions are always in order and greater than a community needs to or can afford to give them. Essentially, because we are small we can be bait and switched and have goalposts moved.
We made commitments to staff, new hires, vendors and landlords confident in the backing of Moline. We've heard from other awardees & employees of mental health issues, suicidal thoughts, housing and food insecurity and more directly related to this issue. We've lost what we had placed in deposits for new shows and markets that we placed because we reasonably expected this to be here by now.
The 30 business owners, who we've contacted separately to provide mutual support are devastated, beyond tears and have had hopes and dreams crushed from a program that was supposed to uplift them but has put many of us further behind than we ever were.
The City literally has the ARPA funds to make this happen, to make this right, but for some reason doesn't want to or cannot see that behind these businesses are people -owners and employees, children and families who are affected by this.
If you have a moment of time, please consider calling and emailing the following decision makers
Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati
City Administrator Bob Vitas
And all of the council members in the attached photo Matt Timion - 4th Ward Alderman - City of Moline, IL James Patrick Schmidt, Moline's Alderman At-Large
Please make them aware that the public needs and expects them to stand by small businesses and the commitments they expressed to us. And please support the small businesses listed here who now suddenly have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to make good on their commitments even if the city won't make good on theirs.
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