A Business Support Hotline is in the works for Quesnel.
Mayor Bob Simpson says the city is partnering with Community Futures to assist local businesses during the COVID-19 crisis.
He says they will do the work to determine the business programs that are becoming available…
“And we’ve set as a target to maximize every dollar that is available, we want every employee, every household and every business to be able to as easily as possible access the dollars that the federal and provincial governments are putting together.”
Simpson says the work to get this going began last week with a conference call with the three business associations that are in the business improvements areas, the Chamber of Commerce and Community Futures.
He says there is no added cost to the city…
“Most of our organizations are going to start repurposing staff. Our Economic Development department, as you can imagine, is having to stand down on some major projects just now that we can’t proceed with. So as a consequence that has freed up some staff time, they still have work to do around our transition strategy, work to do around preparing for some of the programs that we’ve got coming in the summer and the fall, but as a consequence of everybody down just now, all of our amenities closed, we won’t be hosting events and so on, we do have staff resources.”
Simpson says the hotline will be live on April 6th.
And he says they will also be having conversations with other groups that need help such as the not-for-profit sector and seniors to name just two.