Babylon Town to use $90G in federal COVID aid to reach out to Hispanic-owned businesses

Whether it’s a big manufacturer or a mom and pop deli, if it’s a Hispanic-owned business in Babylon, town officials want to know about it.

The town is using $90,000 in federal coronavirus relief aid to launch a new initiative aimed at improving relations with the town’s growing number of Latinos and their establishments.

The Hispanic Outreach Initiative calls for taking a “complete inventory” of existing Hispanic-owned businesses. Then, officials will build a database and establish a business network so the firms can access state and local grant programs and other economic development initiatives.

Babylon officials said they have seen a boom in the town’s Hispanic population over the past decade. But many of the business owners are not members of the local chambers of commerce and are often in the dark about town programs. Officials first recognized the issue during the pandemic while trying to implement a grant program for small businesses.

“During COVID we found we weren’t able to have the outreach [with Hispanic-owned businesses] that we had with businesses that had been operating for a long time,” Babylon Town Supervisor Richard Schaffer said. “We had to turn over every stone to find businesses that understood we were here to help.”

Schaffer added, “there was a lot of distrust.”

As Long Island sees a shift in the types of Hispanic-owned businesses, moving from landscaping and construction to law firms and insurance companies, the town’s initiative can help unite these disparate entities, said Miguel Bonilla, vice president of the Salvadoran American Chamber of Commerce in Brentwood.

“We have to become more whole instead of trying to navigate bureaucracy as individuals so we can become stronger,” he said.

The town’s Local Development Corporation, the nonprofit arm of the Babylon Industrial Development Agency, is managing the program. It hired Long Island Government Relations LLC of Brightwaters to administer the outreach.

The firm’s founder and Principal is Luis Montes, a former top aide and lobbyist for ex-Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, a Democrat. Montes was also a former business partner of Tony Martinez, Babylon’s Deputy Supervisor, from 2010 to 2012 at Pan American Communications LLC.

Montes is a former chairman of the Town of Islip Democratic Committee.

Schaffer said Montes was chosen for his years of work conducting outreach to the Hispanic community. 

Schaffer pointed to census data showing a “dramatic growth” in Babylon’s Hispanic population.

In 2010, nearly 17% of the Babylon Town population identified as Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. census data.

A decade later, nearly 24% of the town’s residents are Hispanic or Latino, the census data shows.

Martinez, a Salvadoran immigrant, said it’s incumbent on town officials to build relationships in the community. Some owners have had bad experiences with the governments in their home countries, he said.

“In Latin America, some governments are no bueno,” Martinez said. Teaching immigrants about government programs, and building trust, is crucial, he added. “We want to get out there to educate them about how things work in the town but also to provide them with opportunities.”

Leonardo Estevez, 50, who owns a dry cleaning business in Copiague, said being a new business owner is daunting.

Finding professionals for hire, such as architects, and navigating the town’s permitting process, is particularly difficult, he said.

“Trying to do it yourself can be a challenge,” Estevez said. “You have to get all the right people and if you’re not familiar with how to do it, you don’t know who the right person is.”