The Development Corporation of Snyder’s board of directors approved a grant program for local businesses Wednesday.
Meeting by teleconference, the board discussed the proposed Operation Snyder Thrives program, before voting unanimously to implement the program.
The program earmarks $40,000 to provide twenty $2,000 grants to small businesses to reimburse them for advertising and other expenses. Of each grant, $1,000 must be spent on advertising while the other $1,000 may be spent on other business expenses. The grant funds will be distributed as reimbursement for allowable expenses.
“As a former small business owner, I would be shell-shocked right now, there is no doubt,” said DCOS Executive Director Brooke Proctor. “So how do we as the DCOS move forward and help them out of this, not just financially, but how do we train them to bring their business around to the other side? How do we help them market their business so that they can survive this?”
The grant program requires recipients to be businesses within the Snyder city limits with a physical store front for commercial use, to be locally owned and with 25 or fewer employees. In addition, recipients may not be part of a national chain or franchise, must be for-profit businesses and may not be owned by officials from the DCOS or another local government entity, or their relatives.
The grant also requires that the business owners receive one hour of one-on-one marketing consultation with a trainer designated by DCOS.
“Do they need to change their message? Do they know what their message is? Do they know where their advertising dollar is best spent? We’re not just throwing money at them, we’re training them, giving them a tool to face forward,” Proctor said.
Some board members questioned the timing of the program.
“My fear is, doing this right now, we’re just going to be throwing money into a situation where it isn’t going to help. It may help for a brief moment, but I really feel like the time to rebuild is going to be a time a little further down the road,” board member Michael Hoyle said. “Right now, I still see that there is some pain to come in this for so many. That’s unfortunate for us all and we hate that, but I just don’t think that giving money right now is the correct time.”
Hoyle suggested that the money be distributed as reimbursement for funds spent.
“If we do this, I think the more prudent way to do it is once somebody has made those arrangements to do advertising or something, then they can bring in an invoice and we can reimburse them on that. And that can be immediate,” Hoyle said. “That can happen quickly for them, but I don’t see it being feasible for us to just hand somebody $2,000 and then to go back around to all those people and follow up to make sure they spent that money correctly. We are charged to make sure that money is spent in a certain way.”
To fund the grant program, the board approved transferring $30,000 into the corporation’s City Partnership Fund. That fund already contains $10,000. The directors also voted to suspend Proctor’s resignation an additional 30 days, after board member Kirsta Koennecke’s motion to extend the contract for two months died due to the lack of a second.
Proctor also discussed the Snyder Think Tank project.
“That was just an idea to gather some different people in the community and start the conversation about how we can move Snyder forward,” she said. “We had a plan for yesterday morning, and we had about seven people, small business owners, people that own property, people that buy and sell property and remodel buildings. But we ended up canceling the call because of commissioners’ court. We will reschedule that call. So that’s all there is to that.”