Zena Forest Products may not be a familiar name in Oregon, but her products were under the feet of many Oregonians.
The family business manufactures hardwood floors, including Oak soil at Portland International International Airport Terminal.
The company of 10 employees, based in the city of Rickreall, west of Salem, is one of those who have benefited from federal programs that support small businesses.
He subscribed to a loan to small businesses, won the US subsidies of the Ministry of Agriculture, asked for technical assistance in small businesses development centers and consulted the Oregon manufacturing extension partnership funded by the federal government.
“All of these programs have been essential,” said Ben Deumling, president of the company. “We would certainly not have grown up and built new facilities and adding employees like we are not without these programs.”
But many of these programs are now in danger because President Donald Trump reduces federal agencies and programs.
The Small Business Administration of the United States in March said that it Cut more than 40% of its staff. The website of the Portland office of the Federal Agency lists two employees, one of which recently published on LinkedIn which he retired.
Trump too reported that he wanted to empty the CDFI federal fundwhich serves disadvantaged companies. Oregon’s manufacturing extension partnership plans to lose federal funds. The Oregon office of the Federal Minority Business Development Agency does not expect to obtain the fourth and the last year of financing a federal contract.
The budget proposed by the President also eliminates federal score funding, a non -profit partner of Small Business Administration, which provides free advice from volunteer experts. Women’s business centers, another SBA program, are also faced with elimination.
“We are going to be the only non-standing technical assistance supplier,” said Mark Gregory, Oregon Small Business Development Center last week during a round manufacturing table to which the American senator Jeff Merkley, D-eargon, the democratic classification of the Senate.
Small businesses development centers, commonly known as SBDC, provide technical assistance using a mixture of federal and state funding.
Federal compression of programs that support small businesses should be particularly painful in Oregon, a state that adopts local businesses and is only home to two fortune companies.
The concerns about funding losses rebounded on the walls during separate round tables last week by the American representative Suzanne Bonamici, D-eargon and Merkley, who both promised to work to protect federal dollars now in danger.
“I will do everything I can to maintain programs, to restore programs that invest in the release of our small businesses that support entrepreneurs,” said Bonamici.
Mike Vanier, president of Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which helps small and medium -sized enterprises, said that it expects to lose $ 2.5 million in annual federal funding, around 40% of the budget of its organization. He is also concerned about the loss of an additional $ 1.9 million dollars of federal funding which he expects to receive over the next three years from the Ministry of Commerce.
“We are at tumultuous moments,” said Merkley during a Friday round table at the Omep Tigard office. “The contracts are canceled on the left and right, people withdrew, have put on leave, the contracts restored, the funds which are not to be described, frozen again.” He then described the “chaos” as “counterproductive for our national economy”.
Vanier said that the federal funding of OMEP had created or kept 1,800 Oregon jobs.
“I can preach on this subject for a long time,” he said. “It’s an absolutely vital program.”
During a separate round table in Beaverton last week, Bonamici heard owners of small businesses and community lenders on the possible reductions in financial development institutions, or CDFIs, organizations designed to help disadvantaged companies access technical and financial resources.
The panelists included Joe Sky-Tuker, CEO of Business Impact NW, a CDFI that works with many groups, including companies belonging to minorities, veterans and women.
“We direct almost all the federal programs you may think,” said Sky-Tuker, adding: “All (all) are in danger.”
In April, Business Impact NW obtained a letter ending his four -year contract to manage an Office of Oregon of the Federal Minority Business Development Agency.
The office offers owners of small head-to-head help companies and connects them to markets for markets. He served nearly 200 people, including Hector Bautista, one of the three employees of Red Hammer Construction of Beaverton.
Bautista said Red Hammer had obtained individual help, including how to write a business plan at the office. Bautista also took a six -week lesson he offered on the estimate.
“It helped me a lot to understand how we should bid properly on future projects,” he said.
The government recently canceled the dismissal of Oregon MBDA in a follow-up letter, but Sky-Tucker is not convinced that its organization will obtain the $ 420,000 ends in annual federal financing.
At the round table, entrepreneur James Orr said he had used federal resources to develop Moore & Orr Trucking, his Tigard -based trucking company.
Orr said he had used Business Impact NW’s Newsletter to discover and connect with other programs, including the Emerprine Emerging Emerging Entrepreneur program. Business Impact NW also helped him get a SBA loan for a second truck.
He transmits to the truck driver the lessons he learned about entrepreneurship.
“If it was not for the NW commercial impact to help me get a loan to get a second truck, he would not be there for me to educate,” said Orr.