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Odessa Development Corporation to help small businesses

The ODC is working to provide funding for struggling small businesses.

ODESSA, Texas — Under current circumstances, businesses are struggling to stay operational. 

As a result, the ODC is working as quickly as possible to help these small businesses that are struggling, and they're not working on it alone.

"We’re fixing to go into a meeting that talks about using CARES funds that the city has received in order to do small business loans in different ways. It’s not really gonna be a pool of ODC funds. It could be a pool of other funds but, ODC will be involved in the whole process of getting those funds to small businesses," Wesley Burnett, Director of Economic Development said.

According to Burnett, businesses could receive up to $25,000 in loans. 

Not every business will receive a loan, but they might be able to receive a grant anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000. However, there are still a lot of details that need to be worked out.

Small businesses are the focus of this assistance, so how do will they know if they will qualify? Burnett says that the criteria will be income related. 

The ODC is working quickly to get these loans and grants out as soon as possible.

"If we can get the process of figuring out the details of this immediately once we start signing agreements with a nonprofit group, that’s going to help facilitate that and coordinate all the funding. It would be immediate so I would hope it’s this month late or possibly early next month, but I couldn’t say that definitively," Burnett said.

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