In the middle of storm season, 4-County Electric Power has one principal job: to keep the power on.
Consequently, Marketing and Public Relations Director Jon Turner said, “the last thing you want to do is be understaffed.”
When this year’s storm season coincided with the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic — including unpaid bills from many customers making use of the statewide ban on utilities disconnections — Turner acknowledged that 4-County could have been in a troubling spot.
“The money wasn’t coming in,” he said. “When people are able to put off those payments, it kind of disrupts the natural rhythm of your business’ cash flow.”
So 4-County applied for loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act passed by Congress in March. The program is aimed at helping small businesses keep workers on the payroll during the pandemic.
4-County received $3.5 million in PPP funding, one of the largest amounts of any business in the area — money that helped the utility retain 142 workers and stay afloat during the worst of times.
“What it allowed us to do was kind of weather the storm,” Turner said.
Getting back into gear
In Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties, 2,010 businesses were approved for PPP loans, for which small businesses with 500 or fewer full-time employees are eligible. If the money is spent on payroll, rent, utilities and mortgage costs — with at least 60 percent devoted to payroll — the loans are forgivable.
Initially, borrowers were given eight weeks to spend the funds they received in order for the loans to become forgivable, but the period was extended to 24 weeks on June 5.
Jennifer Chavez, general manager of four area businesses that received sizable loans, said in an email that the extension allowed for flexibility, took some of the pressure off and helped to cover more employees.
Chavez manages Grassroots Natural Candle Company on Fifth Street North, which is owned by Christopher Lick of Columbus. Grassroots, which has products available in more than 3,000 stores in all 50 states and in Canada, received a loan in the $350,000 to $1 million range, and the other three businesses it operates received even more.
But deemed a non-essential business, Grassroots was ordered to shut down by order of Gov. Tate Reeves. Sales to smaller retailers nearly disappeared, and the effects of the closure are still being felt. Some of the company’s production facilities are slowly beginning to reopen, and others remain closed.
Feeling the financial effects and encouraged by companies it does business with, Grassroots applied for PPP loans for all four of its businesses near the end of the first application period through Pennsylvania-based Customers Bank and New Jersey-based Cross River Bank, with which it holds accounts.
Within two weeks, the applications were approved, and soon, GTR Holdings LLC, which handles key accounts, private labeling and distribution, received a loan between $2 million and $5 million. Aspen River Candle Company, which sells candles but does not use natural products, received between $1 million and $2 million; so did Aspen Lake Online LLC, which manufactures privately labeled bath and body products for retailers to sell.
In all, the money received by Lick’s businesses will allow them to retain 743 employees and keep management teams, salespeople and some of their maintenance personnel on staff, though most production and fulfillment staff remain furloughed.
“As we start to ramp back up, we are starting to bring in production and fulfillment staff and scaling it back up as we are able to start manufacturing and fulfilling orders,” Chavez said.
Other area businesses, too, have used PPP funds to get back into gear.
University Management LLC, which operates the Eat With Us Group — whose 16 restaurants include Harvey’s in Columbus and Starkville, Jackson Square Grill in Columbus and Central Station Grill in Starkville, as well as the Golden Triangle’s Sweet Peppers Deli and Smackers locations, among others — temporarily laid off 500 employees when restaurants were ordered to close their dining rooms due to the pandemic.
The group received a loan in the $2 million to $5 million range and has slowly brought back all its employees since dining rooms were permitted to reopen a month ago.
“It allowed us to re-employ all the people that we had to lay off,” Chief Financial Officer Robert Fort said.
Applications still open for loans
BankFirst President and CEO Moak Griffin said when the Small Business Administration rolled out PPP loans in March, there were some expected bumps in the road early on.
“The SBA was rolling it out in real time,” Griffin said. “They put all this together in just a couple of weeks.”
But as time passed, things got smoother, and the program worked as intended.
“I think it was a big success in doing what it was supposed to do: get the money to those business owners to save those jobs and keep those folks employed,” Griffin said.
He should know: BankFirst was the most common lender for local business, approving 581 PPP loan applications for local companies and 1,500 in all.
And the process isn’t over yet. The prior deadline to apply was June 30, but on July 4, President Donald Trump signed a bill approving an extension for the program through Aug. 8, with more than $130 billion still available for businesses nationwide.
“The process is just stretched out longer,” Griffin said. “That’s not a bad thing; that’s a good thing for borrowers.”
John Oxford, senior vice president and director of marketing and public relations for Renasant Bank, said Renasant is still accepting applications for business owners who do not have any applications in or pending with other banks.
Renasant has approved about 11,100 applications for $1.34 billion, including 330 loans for area businesses.
Griffin said the recent extension from eight to 24 weeks isn’t the only thing continuing to change within the program. The original 11-page application to have the loans forgiven has been shortened to three pages, and there’s been a push in Congress to have it reduced to one page.
It’s another example, Griffin said, that as time goes on, the changes that are made continue to be in favor of local business owners.
“I think that’s just important for people to remember: It’s still a fluid situation,” Griffin said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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