Gap loans get vital capital to local businesses
Re: “Fancy restaurants should not be on government menu,” Aug. 18
For a balanced perspective on the DHCD Neighborhood Business Works loan program, the thoughtful reader should view the eligibility requirements for accessing the gap financing loan program on DHCD’s website.
Gap financing means that commercial underwriters have already approved the project under their collateralization and lending standards, which include a thorough business plan. The NBW program exists to close the gap between what the lender will authorize (never more than 50 percent) and the total cost of the project. This can be an invaluable service, especially in today’s capital markets.
NBW does take a secondary position on the loan, and modifications may be necessary in business downturns, but the intent is to refurbish communities with locally-owned businesses in designated areas to create vibrancy and jobs. A reasoned risk analysis
that the loan will be repaid with interest is congruent with the
agency’s mission to revitalize neighborhoods.
Risk assessment and transparency issues are always complex in lending, particularly so with small borrowers. But recognizing the fact that declining state revenues are forcing difficult policy decisions, the mission of this program is laudable.
Casey Willson
MD Small Business Development Center
University of Maryland
Plenty of Kennedy fans left to honor his legacy
Re: “Now for the rest of the Kennedy legacy,” Aug. 30
As an American who’s not particularly liberal (maybe just a little around the edges) how can I put this nicely? By all means, Diana West is free to express some satisfaction over a great man’s demise on your editorial page. Ted Kennedy didn’t see things your way, and it is your paper, after all.
However, if you think everybody to your left is going to fade away now because Kennedy is dead, you’re going to be disappointed. As Thomas Jefferson might say, The Examiner is surely “a monument to the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
Bob Scher
Annandale
Our constitutional rights are seriously endangered
Re: “The Bill of Rights makes a comeback,” July 27
It was a pleasure reading Barbara Hollingsworth’s column. But the current trend in this country is a grave problem. The constitutional rights Americans fought and died for are a thing of the past.
The right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure is at best relative to the situation, the aggrieved party, the judicial level, and the person’s ability to finance an expensive defense. All one has to do is look at the staggering number of SWAT teams that enter the wrong homes and unjustly accuse and arrest the wrong people to understand the degradation of our Fourth Amendment protections.
What you don’t hear about is the quadruple number of cases where the police blatantly circumvent legal requirements and judges condone, instead of condemn, their actions. Judges swear to uphold the laws of the United States as written and interpreted by the Supreme Court, but they don’t. The police know they can get away with almost anything, the rights of the citizen be damned.
David T. Clenney
Alexandria
