Yesterday, Ronnie Collins, who identified himself as a loan officer from the SBA, called.
Ronnie said that, despite information we received on December 11 from Kathy Valentina [Valentinsic?] at the SBA, that we could not use the LA Road Home grant to reduce our SBA loan monthly payments. Well, actually, Ronnie said, we could reduce that payment to some degree, but the amount of that reduction would be capped based on our 2004 income, according to SBA policy as relayed to us by Ronnie.
This being news to me, I asked Ronnie if this SBA policy was written down somewhere. Ronnie said yes. I asked Ronnie where I could access this policy, and Ronnie said I could not. I asked Ronnie where he had accessed this policy, and he said it was an SBA policy. And so we went around like that for a while.
Of course, having talked to lots of people like Ronnie on the phone during the past two and a half years since Katrina, I realized where this conversation was going very quickly even if, initially, Ronnie did not. The conversation would go to and the conversation would end with Ronnie saying this is the way things are done, and that the people who these things are being done to have no assurance that these things are being done consistently or fairly or even legally, but nevertheless this is the way these things are being done and blah blah blah and boo hoo hoo and tick tock says the clock on the wall.
So that’s the way the conversation ended.
So blah blah blah and boo hoo hoo and tick tock says the clock on the wall.
