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Gene: Hey everybody. This is Gene Marks. You’re seeing me live and alongside me on this side or that side is my co-host Jon Aidukonis, this is great. We are actually seeing each other as we’re having a conversation, which is an amazing thing. Before COVID we used to do this face to face and then I haven’t seen your smiling face in a long time, at least not face to face.

Jon: It’s been a while. Yeah. It’s strange, but good to be back as live as we can be in this world.

Gene: Yeah. It really is. And so you have to do your best when I say something stupid to try and not show like an expression on your face or roll your eyes because the world can see you.

Gene: Well, thanks everybody for joining us. We have a great conversation plan today with Julio Casiano. He is a deputy district director of the Small Business Administration. And as you guys know that sort of follow this podcast or are now watching along with us, Jon and I kind of split up the conversation a little bit. I’ve got a bunch of questions to ask Julio, just to start with. But first of all, we brought in, let’s bring in Julio and so we can say hello. There he is. Julio, how are you?

Julio: Hey, good morning. And thank you for inviting same day payday loans Bryan me in the SBA here to have this wonderful discussion this morning on a Friday.

Gene: Yeah. We were looking forward to it. Now, you were telling us before we actually went live, you’re based in Hartford.

But I actually wanted to just talk to you a little about the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program

Julio: Sure. The Connecticut District Office is located in downtown Hartford at 280 Trumbull and each state has an SBA office. So all the programs and everything I’ll be talking about are similar in any other state that your business or where you want to transfer to, you could easily go to one of the SBA offices there.

Gene: All right. That’s great to know. So Julio, so I’m going to start out with some questions and Jon jump in, obviously if I’m leaving any gaps.

Gene: If that’s okay. Can you give us, we’re having this conversation now as like the middle of November. Number one is, can you give us a status of the program and also update us on when it expires, the program itself just to say, I’ve been reading that it doesn’t expire now. It’s been extended to the end of 2021. So can you just update us on what the program is and how long we have to apply?

There are two parts to this program, but let me talk about the loans part first

Julio: That was a declaration that was…first Connecticut was one of the first states back in to declare COVID as a disaster. And what had happened then, it rose to the level of going from the governor of the state of Connecticut to the president of the United States. And then at the same time, other states also were filing to declare COVID as a disaster back in March, as far back as we’re talking over almost two years. And when COVID at that point was basically ravaging around the country and expanding. Back then, president Trump then signed the authorization to declare it nationally COVID as a disaster. What that did it rose to the level of a declaration similar to a hurricane or a tornado. Right now in Connecticut, we were just issued a declaration for hurricane Ida that occurred back in September.