By George Shaw for The Wake Forest Gazette
Overview
Organizations located in the Wake Forest area received more than $140 million in awards from the roughly $3 trillion federal economic stimulus program. The information on about $1.5 trillion of this funding is available on the website of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). They used data from USASpending.gov as well as reports from specific federal government agencies.
The POGO website enables sorting by zip code, federal agency as well as the type of program. The assessment for our area covers organizations that filed for assistance from Zip Codes 27587 (Wake Forest), 27571 (Rolesville) and 27596 (Youngsville). The data includes many smaller organizations in our area but generally excludes franchises and chain stores.
Types of Programs Covered
o Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) -a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll. This program is managed by the Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA will forgive loans if all employee retention criteria are met.
o Disaster Assistance Loans (DAL) – a traditional SBA loan program to businesses and other organizations.
o Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) – an advance from the SBA of up to $10,000 designed to provide economic relief to businesses currently experiencing a temporary loss of revenue
o Other Grants – Promotion of the Arts Fund from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Education Stabilization Fund from the Department of Education
Major Individual Awards
Among the more than 3100 awards across our area, there were eight awards more than $1 million, all for the Paycheck Protection Program. How does this compare with the rest of North Carolina? Our state received around 50 awards for $7.5 million each as well as about 640 awards for $3.5 million each.
o Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Wake Forest) – $3.5 million
o Infrastructure Technology Services Inc. (Youngsville) – $3.5 million
o Majestic Marble and Glass (Youngsville) – $3.5 million
o K-Flex USA (Youngsville) -$3.5 million
o Hillside Nursing Center (Wake Forest) – $1.5 million
o Capital Chevrolet (Wake Forest) – $1.5 million
o Southern Lithoplate (Youngsville) – $1.5 million
o Robling Medical (Youngsville) – $1.5 million
Overall Award Data
For the data across all of the programs, 71% of the reported dollars for our area went to Wake Forest, 5% to Rolesville and 24% to Youngsville. Within Zip Code 27587, 70% of the dollars were for the Payroll Protection Plan, 27% for Disaster Assistance Loans, and 3% for Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
| Broader Area | $ Millions | # Awards |
| Zip 27587 (Wake Forest) | $ 101.7 | 2427 |
| Zip 27571 (Rolesville) | $ 6.6 | 255 |
| Zip 27596 (Youngsville) | $ 33.8 | 511 |
| Total | $ 142.1 | 3193 |
| Zip Code 27587 | $ Millions | # Awards |
| Paycheck Protection Program | $ 71.6 | 1031 |
| Disaster Assistance Loans | $ 26.9 | 468 |
| Economic Injury Disaster Loans | $ 2.8 | 921 |
| Other | $ 0.4 | 3 |
| Total | $ 101.7 | 2423 |
Most awards $150,000 or more listed the organization that received the grant. These large awards comprised about 57% of the total value of the awards. About 80% of these awards were from the Payroll Protection Program; the balance for Disaster Assistance Loans.
| Largest Zip 27587 Awards ($150,000+) | ||
| $ Millions | # Awards | |
| Health Care | $ 7.4 | 23 |
| Automotive | $ 4.6 | 9 |
| Restaurants & Food Service | $ 4.5 | 21 |
| Education | $ 4.4 | 5 |
| Industrial | $ 3.2 | 9 |
| Technology | $ 3.1 | 12 |
| Dentists | $ 2.4 | 9 |
| Home Help | $ 2.4 | 8 |
| Faith Organizations | $ 2.3 | 4 |
| Landscaping | $ 2.2 | 7 |
| Other | $ 18.9 | 76 |
| Total | $ 55.3 | 183 |
Update on COVID-19 data for our area
The State of North Carolina tracks four primary metrics to determine whether to relax guidelines on reopening the economy. Each of these measures continue to show improvement in the last week. Wake County reported an uptick in both new cases and deaths during the seven day period but the trends in the northern part of the county remains positive.
The number of cases for North Carolina rose 8,492 during the last week, down from 8,979 the prior week. The number of deaths grew 191, an increase from 183 during the previous seven-day period. North Carolina’s rank in terms of cases per million population declined from 27th to 28th among the 50 states and dropped from 31st to 32nd for the rate of deaths from the virus. It slipped from the 24th highest rate of tests to the 26th.
Tests decreased by 1% from 25.3 thousand daily to 25.1 thousand using a 14-day moving average. This is a decline of 11% from a peak of 26.7 thousand cases for the two-week period ending September 7.
The percentage testing positive declined from 5.3% a week ago to just under 5.0% today. Our state’s benchmark is for the percentage of positive tests to be below 5%. Only 20 states currently have a positive test rate below 6%.
Similarly, the 14-day moving average for hospitalizations from the virus declined from 940 a week ago to 913 today, a reduction of 3%. This average has declined consistently for at least the last 35 days.
New cases in Wake County declined from 622 to 611 in the last week, a reduction of 2%. Deaths declined from 10 to 8.
New cases in our Zip Code 27587 were down again. They declined from 41 last week to 33 for the last seven days. And there have been no new reported fatalities from the virus since August 21.
Zip Code 27571 (Rolesville) reported 5 new cases this past week to bring its total to 72. This compares with only 2 new cases during the prior week. Zip 27596 (Youngsville) rose from 207 to 214 cases. This reflects an increase of 7 cases compared with growth of 13 last week. Zip 27571 has reported no deaths; Zip 27596 continues to report a single fatality.
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