PORT & CHAMBER UPDATES
March 30, 2020
Business and Community News
GROCERY DELIVERY & MORE: Columbia County Public Transit has successfully pulled together a local grocery delivery program! Dayton Mercantile can take phone orders and payment over the phone (excluding alcohol and cigarettes) and CCPT will deliver the orders. (Requests are out to set up the same service for Steve's Grocery and the BMS Co-op Market.) CCPT is also continuing Saturday service, delivering Senior Center Meals to Starbuck on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and can make grocery deliveries to Starbuck those days as well. In order to make deliveries of take-out and other local products work, volunteers are needed to act as an intermediary. Please call CCPT at 382-1647 to volunteer or for more info on any of the above-mentioned programs.

SMALL BUSINESS LOAN INFO: The small business loan information is starting to become more clearly defined. The following two documents provide very good information to help your business or non-profit decide which program may work best for you.



The newest SBA loan program will run through our local lenders. Banner Bank sent us a message today that they will be processing loan requests for businesses whether they are a current client or not, and have set up a separate web page where they will upload information as SBA publishes it. Currently they are asking interested businesses to complete the inquiry form on this site to establish their place in line (so to speak) and they will reach out once they have the guidelines and application forms.


We are still trying to find out which of our other Columbia County lenders will be participating and will share any new information as it comes along.

THE WHOLE CAN OF WORMS: This document explains what relief is offered to hospitals and health systems (luckily that is on the first page) plus 38 other pages with info on every single part of the legislation for those of you who would like to learn more.


Bored While You're Stuck at Home? Fill Out Your Census Form Online Now!
Did you know that for every person that does not fill out a census form, Columbia County loses almost $2,000 in federal funding per year? During the last decade, Columbia County left a lot of money on the table due to uncounted residents. Census counts are used for things like county road funding, farm bill funding, congressional district boundaries, and so much more.

By now you should have received either a paper copy of the census form or a postcard with a code directly linked to your address on it. You can fill out the census form online, and it only takes about 10 minutes. If you don't have a postcard with a code, you can still fill it out just by putting in your address.

The first census response rates were released today, and Columbia County had the second highest response rate in the state - 19.6%! That is great....but we've still got 80.4% of the county to go. If you fill it out now, no one will come knocking on your door in April.