Barbara Hathaway, the director of the Bee Cave Public Library, and her staff have carried about 95% of the work load to get the program, which will be called the Small Business Assistance Center, up and running, City Manager Clint Garza said.
Hathaway said during the April 7 update the SBAC should be live by the end of the week.
The program will be broadcast through Bee Cave's social media sites, its website, and in emails and a full-page ad in a print newspaper.
"I thiink [we will advertise this on] everything short of smoke signals," Garza said.
The plan, which originally came from the Bee Cave Chamber of Commerce, seeks to utilize area librarians to provide information and staff a Small Business Assistance Center that would assist business owners in need of aid, among other functions.
During a March 31 City Council meeting and while representing the chamber, Adrian Overstreet, owner of the Bee Cave Austin Sonesta Hotel, said the chamber has been working on helping small businesses who have been getting more desperate as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Even though the stimulus package passed, there is likely much more time until assistance arrives, Overstreet said, adding the process to get the money will likely be extraordinarily complex.
"The city has a great resource, which is the library," Overstreet said. "That's what librarians do for a passion and a living is they accumulate information. Since they're not checking out books right now, this seemed like a logical fit for librarians."
