If your business is small, D.C.-based and, like so many local firms, in need of some extra cash, Erik A. Moses may be the man to see.
In a first for the agency, the D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development is jumping into the grant and loan business — and it has $11 million to start with, director Moses said.
“We’re trying to build a comprehensive small business support agency,” Moses said. “Financing is something we never really had a role in. ”
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who is seeking to foster D.C. business growth — and the local tax base — tapped Moses to oversee the newly beefed-up department in January.
In its previous session, City Council set aside $11 million in grant money to help struggling small business owners pay increasingly burdensome commercial property taxes, and it charged Moses with working out the details.
Moses is trying to hammer out who will qualify and how much they will get, and is expected to present his proposal to the City Council Committee on Finance and Revenue this week.
But splitting $11 million between the 11 thousand D.C. businesses that gross less than a half million dollars a year would leave each owner with only $1,000 in tax relief, Moses said.
“It’s a short term answer to a long term hurt and pain.”
Instead, he wants to establish more creative programs that he said will have a bigger impact on small businesses.
He’d like the moneyto fund a combination of grants, loan guarantees, credit enhancements, hardship loans and matching loans, among other programs.
“What I’m more interested in doing is the ‘teach a man to fish’ philosophy, as opposed to the ‘give a man a fish’ one,’” he said. “This is our first real opportunity to put together and develop a meaningful access-to-capital program in the District.”
Moses is aiming to make the money available to qualifying business in January 2008.
