We are all aware of this terrible COVID-19 outbreak.

As a small business owner in Central Florida, I have concerns that need to be immediately addressed regarding the handling of mandatory closing of our businesses without any provision to help us with our continuing obligations that have not stopped, even though we were required to close.

On March 17th, all bars and nightclubs were ordered to close, and restaurants were directed to operate at 50% capacity. On March 20th, restaurants were restricted to only selling food to go.  We had to comply with the law even though we have continuing obligations such as rent and NO money coming in.  The mandatory closing has put us in a position of not being able to meet our obligations.  How can we be expected to continue to employ 150 people with no money coming in?

SBA loans are available, as we know, but we won’t know about those results until much later, and the website continuously crashes.  The bridge loans of $50,000 each will only go out to 1,000 businesses- this doesn’t even cover the Central Florida area much less the entire state.

This puts us in this position: The government mandated us to close our doors yet we are still required to pay our bills.  How many will be able to do this?  My guess is very few.

The restaurant and bar industry will be taking a massive hit as a direct result of government action.  We have no control over this.  If something is not done, a massive number of restaurants and bars will NEVER reopen as most operators do not have the capital to support the costs incurred with no corresponding revenue.

Small business owners need to have support from the government in this type of situation.  We need a mechanism to defer required payments under circumstances like these.  Our biggest expense is rent.  We need rent moratorium or some other mechanism to pay rent.  If assistance isn't received, restaurants will be closing doors permanently.

We have healthy businesses but many others aren’t in the same boat. Even our businesses are at risk of closure because we still have to pay our rent even though the government mandated the closure.

If we have to close our doors permanently, that means we would be putting 150 people into unemployment line.  Many others will have to do the same.  I cannot imagine what the actual numbers will be if the majority of small businesses go under because they simply cannot pay their rent for these two to three months.

We are asking you to please represent your citizens in an honorable way, because closing down hard-working American business owners without recognizing the consequences of government action will result in a state-wide, possibly country-wide economic depression very soon.

This is serious.