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Economic Vitality Committee <br />Minutes <br />April 15, 2020 <br />Page 5 of 7 <br />Staff will move “information only” to after “acknowledgements” to be clear with <br />applicants the information is not required for a complete application. <br /> <br />Mayor Stolzmann discussed how different pools of funds, using criteria, will be <br />used, General Fund vs LRC. Director Pierce clarified that all applicants will be <br />in one criteria pool and that LRC funding will be applied to businesses within the <br />URA first, but that they are still eligible for General Fund money after LRC <br />money is allocated. Both Council and LRC could be open to providing more <br />money. <br /> <br />Chair Dickinson would like to use the LASER acronym: Louisville Aid for <br />Stabilization and Economic Revitalization. He summarized: <br />• Louisville City Council has $350,000 to give to grant to businesses <br />affected by public health demands due to COVID-19 <br />• Applications will be accepted Wednesday – Friday next week <br />• Grants will be in the amount of $5,000 <br />• Purpose is to help small businesses due to public health demands <br />• There is a limited amount <br />• Marketing must include criteria and what it takes to qualify for the grant <br />• Simplicity – must be simple <br />• Have we clearly determined the qualifications? <br />• Rank – are we able to rank by injury, are we able to rank by type, are we <br />able to rank by year <br /> <br />There was again discussion about business type and if it should be used for <br />ranking. Director Pierce said she would not recommend ranking types of <br />businesses, could cause conflict in objectivity. She wants to be transparent to <br />the applicant. Staff suggested they could go back to the mandate of the <br />executive order and attempt to use critical vs. non-critical as a proxy for the <br />amount of economic injury potentially experienced by a business. Staff felt this <br />was something that could mostly be verified. Director Pierce noted that the City <br />wants applications and we want to see how many applications we cannot <br />respond to. <br /> <br />Chair Dickinson said everyone is trying to figure out a way to be helpful and <br />how to make the process fair and be able to defend it. He suggests if we are <br />taking calculations for injury and take out rank order of types of businesses, he <br />thinks it would be appropriate to award grants to businesses that were entirely