Community Calendar

A Zoom Call About the Effectiveness of the P.P.P. and EIDL

Join the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber, the Town of Brunswick. The Town of Topsham, Maine Street Bath and the Brunswick Downtown Association on Thursday, April 16 from 9AM to 10AM for “A Zoom Call About the Effectiveness of the P.P.P. and EIDL.  The call will be facilitated by the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber. 

We have invited representatives from the offices of Senator Susan Collins, Senator Angus King. Representative Chellie Pingree and Representative Jared Golden to join the call to hear the concerns from you. 
**(Update: 3 out of 4 offices confirmed their attendance in the first 6 hours, the 4th is looking for who will attend the call)**

Topic:
With the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate scheduled to reconvene on Monday April 20 to discuss an additional round of Federal Stimulus, it is important we give them the information needed to best represent our wishes.  The $350B of the Paycheck Protection Program (P.P.P.) looks like it will not be enough and more money will need to be allocated to that program.  Additionally, some issues have arisen around the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) through the SBA as well. 

These programs are intend to help small businesses and if there are ways the eligibility or use of these programs can be altered to make them more effective, then we have a responsibility to share those concerns with our Congressional delegation.  They want to do best by us, but we need to tell them exactly what that is. 

How to Register (100 only)
Our aim is to have a productive conversation as to why these programs need alteration, if they do. To that end, the call is limited to the first 100 business leaders who register.  You must register on the link below.  Once you have registered you will be sent a link with the Zoom call-in information.  This process is so that we do not have spam callers registering for one of the spots. 

You also do not need to be a chamber member to be on this call, or a BDA or Main Street Bath member- this is open to all, because this issue affects all.   

Pre-Meeting Comments & Questions/ Process of the Meeting:
Finally, with 60 minutes and 100 businesses we cannot expect that everyone will get to ask a question or make a comment.  In fact signing up to simply listen is completely acceptable and encouraged.

When you receive the Zoom call-in information you will also get an e-mail link to submit a question or comment before the meeting.  When you submit a question or comment it does two things:
- it lets us know what is important to you
- it allows us to compile those comments in some sort of order and handle the most popular topics first.  

The pre-meeting comments and questions will be used as a prompt so we will say things like, “Bill Business Owner has a comment about using PPP funds for inventory, Bill why don’t you share your thoughts with the group.”   From there we will use the Zoom chat function for additional questions, comments and follow ups.     

We strongly encourage that if you have a specific question or concern that you send the question or comment pre-meeting. 

So to recap:
- Zoom call on Thursday April 16 from 9AM to 10AM to discuss the business loan programs through the Federal Stimulus (PPP and EIDL) hosted by the SMMC

- Register on the link below (Name, Business, E-mail for the invite to be sent out) and we will follow up with an e-mail with the call-in information

- Once the registrant is validated as authentic, the invitation will include an e-mail link for questions and comments to be received PRIOR to the meeting and strongly encouraged. 

- One registrant per business please

Follow-up
The representatives from the Congressional delegation have not been asked to present anything, but to simply join us so they can hear your concerns in your own words.  To that end, we will also be recording the meeting and build a summary of the call for our Congressional delegation.  The hope is we will be able to summarize the call into 3-5 key takeaways that they can use when representing us in Washington next week. 

FMI e-mail Cory at the SMMC (or click here executivedirector@midcoastmaine.com )

Download iCal