A City of Perry revolving loan fund has become so popular it’s nearly tapped out and there’s a waiting list of businesses still wanting to take advantage of the opportunity.

This week the City Council approved requests from the Hotel Pattee and Mandarin Café for furniture repair and a stove purchase respectively.  City Administrator Butch Niebuhr says the fund has been beneficial for many businesses.

“The revolving loan fund started with $200,000, after these two loans were approved I think we’re going to have about $10,000 left of the fund that’s available and we already have a couple of people waiting in line to put applications in.   It’s been pretty popular the last three years.  I think it has been in existence for almost seven years but it started off real slow and has become popular now.  I wish we had some more funds in there to help our businesses out” says Niebuhr.

The initial fund came from a bond issuance, but now Niebuhr says they’re looking into another option to continue offering revolving loans to local businesses.

“The USDA has some programs targeted toward small towns with low to moderate income households and Perry would qualify for that so we’re looking at a couple areas where we could get a USDA loan, which the payback isn’t necessarily back to the USDA the payback goes into a fund in the city of Perry which they manage as a revolving loan fund.”

Niebuhr says the difference between the current urban renewal loan fund and the possible revolving loan fund with the USDA is that the new one would be targeted toward low to moderate income businesses.   He says they’re just starting to scratch the surface on the possible partnership with the USDA and nothing is official as of yet.