The City of Kenai is expanding its CARES Act grants programs to include two groups not covered by the first round of grants: smaller businesses, with annual gross revenues of between $25,000 and $49,999, and City of Kenai residents who hold Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission permits.
Applicants will be eligible for a $1,000 grant from the City’s share of federal CARES Act funding distributed by the state. The City Council on July 1 approved the two new grant programs to further assist Kenai residents who experienced a financial loss due to the COVID-19 health emergency.
City Manager Paul Ostrander says that the City decided that smaller businesses needed help: “There’s two other grant programs that have been created now that look to capture businesses that were unable to apply, or did not qualify, during the first round of grants. The first one is for even smaller businesses than qualified under the first grant. So, the first grant required that you had at least $50,000 in gross income in 2019. What this second grant, this expansion, allows is for the businesses that were between $25,000 – $50,000 – that they are now eligible to apply for this grant. So, these are even smaller businesses than qualified for the first grant.”
He also discussed how this impacts commercial fishermen: “A grant program that allows commercial fishermen that hold fishing permits, that live within the City of Kenai, to apply for a grant up to $1,000. So, both in the case of the commercial fishermen and in the case of the smaller businesses, the grants are at $1,000 per business. The commercial fishermen did not qualify for the first round of grants. It required a business license in the first round of grants, and commercial fisherman typically don’t have a business license so they didn’t qualify.”
The City will receive $7.7 million in federal CARES Act funding through the state’s allocation formula, and the City Council has decided to distribute about half of the funds to businesses, nonprofits, and individuals in need of financial assistance due to the economic damage of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The first grant application period for businesses and nonprofits closed June 19, and the City a week later sent out almost $2 million to more than 180 eligible participants before extending the application period to July 17. The grants can be used to help businesses and nonprofits deal with the loss of income due to mandatory shutdowns, inventory loss, additional operating expenses of reopening to the public, costs of protecting staff and customers or the public, or other economic impacts.
Applications can be found online at the City of Kenai’s website.