Under the Payroll Protection loan program, 270 loans were listed as issued to Southborough business owners. While some are businesses based in Southborough, others appear to be residential addresses of business owners.
Of the loans, over 54 were fore $150,000 or more. Four of those exceeded $1M.
Under the CARES Act, the Small Business Administration’s loan program was billed as for Payroll Protection. In applications, Southborough loan recipients committed to retaining 2,327 jobs.
Eight applicants for large loans didn’t commit to retaining jobs. (For instance—Energy Federation received over $1M and left the field blank. Beals and Thomas received a loan between $350K and $1M, while indicating zero jobs would be retained.) 27 large loan recipients committed to retaining more than 20 jobs.
For loans under $150K, only 18 committee to retaining 10 or more employees. 60 only committed to saving 1 employee, with most of them listed as a sole proprietorships. 42 either listed 0 employees or left the field blank.
The large loans didn’t list specify amounts, instead grouping companies by ranges. For loans under $150K, the amounts were specified while the company names were stripped out.
The two largest loans went to Fay School and Versitat for between $2-5 million. (They each committed to retaining well over 100 jobs.)
A curious resident downloaded the publicly available information and shared it with me. The reader noted that for the 216 loans under $150K:
- A total of $7.7M was granted to Southborough business owners
- The average loan was $35,770
- The largest was for $146,000 to a company whose industry code identifies it as a law office
- The smallest was for $1,000 to a self-employed individual
Out of all the applicants, only six businesses owners indicated they were a race other than white (none for loans over $150K). Only 13 indicated they were female owned companies (two for large loans). None indicated they were owned by a veteran.
Below is the list of employers with loans for $150K-$5M. Click here to see the full spreadsheet with more details. Click here to view the spreadsheet of smaller loans.
$2-5 Million
The Fay School Inc (145 jobs retained)
Veristat, LLC (179 jobs retained)
$1-2 Million
Energy Federation, Inc.
Gleeson Powers Inc (55 jobs retained)
Riverside Tree and Landscaping (94 jobs retained)
$350,000-1 Million
AndPlus, LLC (44 jobs retained)
Bay State Property Services, Inc (27 jobs retained)
Beals and Thomas, Inc. (0 jobs retained)
BioDirection, Inc. (20 jobs retained)
Block Engineering, LLC (32 jobs retained)
Capital Convention Contractors Inc. (33 jobs retained)
Code Red Consultants, LLC (34 jobs retained)
CoreAxis LLC (44 jobs retained)
Fitts Insurance Agency, Inc. (23 jobs retained)
Fluid Power Products, Inc. (19 jobs retained)
Four Rohwers Inc (46 jobs retained)
Galvion Soldier Power, LLC (32 jobs retained)
GTxcel, Inc. (27 jobs retained)
Hospitality Mutual Insurance (22 jobs retained)
KC Pizza Incorporated (89 jobs retained)
Kenney & Sams, P.C. (24 jobs retained)
MIS Training Institute Inc (17 jobs retained)
Professional Fire Systems, Inc. (60 jobs retained)
R.H. Long Motor Sales Inc (59 jobs retained)
Sheehan Health Group, LLC (23 jobs retained)
Syner-G Pharma Consulting, LLC (42 jobs retained)
Technium, Inc.
Twin Pines Landscaping, Inc. (60 jobs retained)
$150,000-350,000
Alan J McDonald
American Climbers LLC (17 jobs retained)
Block Mems, LLC (14 jobs retained)
Brendon Properties, Inc. (17 jobs retained)
Cable Matters Inc. (9 jobs retained)
Capital Group Properties LLC (15 jobs retained)
Codcomm Inc (26 jobs retained)
Device Technologies Inc (21 jobs retained)
Fresh Food Sales and Marketing, Div. Of Frank C May Assoc (13 jobs retained)
Granite Guy Inc (0 jobs retained)
JBJ Construction, LLC (11 jobs retained)
Law Offices Of David A Camiel, Pc (14 jobs retained)
Macura Excavating, LLC
McCarthy Pools Corporation (8 jobs retained)
Milford Stone Company, Inc. (6 jobs retained)
My Estate Concierge, LLC (12 jobs retained)
Newmine LLC (14 jobs retained)
Southborough Dental Associates LLC (14 jobs retained)
Sproutward, LLC
Ted’s Of Fayville, Inc (31 jobs retained)
The Fusion Group, Inc. (12 jobs retained)
Toss Corporation (13 jobs retained)
Trask, Inc. (9 jobs retained)
Trigent Software Inc
Upstart Power, Inc. (19 jobs retained)
Wee Care For Little People Inc (43 jobs retained)
For many small businesses, they may not have employees because the “employees“ are the owners. Especially if they self funded the business, they might be just drawing out owners equity and may not be getting a W-2. I could be wrong, but I think this might explain why there are a lot of small businesses that are retaining zero jobs. They’re keeping the owners afloat so they can keep their small businesses going even though they don’t technically have a W-2 employee. Also please remember that many small businesses may not have W-2 employees, but may use a lot of 1099 contractors.
To clarify, I’m not passing judgement on the size of the loans vs jobs retained. I’m noting the data because given the name “Payroll Protection” I found the numbers interesting. But thank you raising the point about the contractors.
“Out of all the applicants, only six businesses owners indicated they were a race other than white (none for loans over $150K). Only 13 indicated they were female owned companies (two for large loans). None indicated they were owned by a veteran.”
This is VERY misleading. 95% of the businesses did NOT answer this question, so there is no way you can make the assumption on what percentage of RACE, Gender and Veterans received loans. Not sure why this would be relevant to your post given how many people did not answer the question in the application.
I noted that only those number of applicants indicated they were. As for why it is relevant, these were classifications in the data. I was sharing the data stats.
The PPP program highlights how difficult it is to design a “means-tested” program that doesn’t foster disparate treatment or create perverse incentives, remarkably in this case at higher levels of the income scale.
Aside from any inequities engendered between employers who did or didn’t have the wherewithal to apply and obtain a loan, you had at the either extreme of loan recipients:
1) Employers whose operations never skipped a beat in terms of revenue that can achieve full forgiveness based on retaining staff they’d have retained anyway.
2) Employers whose operations were totally locked-down producing zero income were asked to gamble that they could achieve forgiveness if they continued to pay their employees for not working with no money coming in the business, simply to break even on payroll costs and cover 40-60% of toward certain overhead costs.
Moreover, the tax treatment of the eventual deductibility or non-deductibility of PPP loan forgiveness has the potential to exacerbate this dichotomy further in favor of the “didn’t need” group.
In retrospect, adding a “change in revenue” component to the percentage forgiveness formula may have yielded a more efficient, targeted approach. (It also would have put more teeth in the “need the loan” certification on the loan application.)
But, in terms of administrative compliance, it’s harder to trace the accrual of business income over an 8 (or now even 24) week period than the payment of wages and payroll costs in an arm’s length transaction between employer and employee reported to the government on a weekly or quarterly cash basis. Likewise, there are myriad other policy and administrative considerations in connection with the supplement and extension of unemployment benefits further complicating the program design.
Finally, I don’t think the listed “jobs retained” numbers were the result of any commitment by the employer to retain jobs, but simply an SBA projection based on full-time equivalents reported in the application determining the loan amount.
According to an investigative report Monday night (7/13) on WFXT (Ch. 25), the published amounts for many listed entities are wildly different from the far more modest amounts actually received.