Program Summary: Rosanne Foust, President and CEO of SAMCEDA spoke about the Economic Landscape of San Mateo County. Ms. Foust is the leading voice of the business community in San Mateo County and across the Bay Area on issues important to maintain a strong local and regional economy, attract and retain major employers and good jobs, and create partnerships between business and government to address the critical issues of affordable housing, traffic congestion, mobility improvements, and maintain a good quality of life. She has served in many key community government positions to include Mayor of Redwood City. She made the following key points:
- What have we been doing? SAMCEDA started in 1953 and many key figures helped get this going - Foster, Crocker and other leading figures of the community.
- Various key links at SAMCEDA.org: public policy advocacy, economic research, and championing the business community as healthy businesses lead to healthy communities. Nevertheless, in the last 8 weeks SAMCEDA has pivoted to a laser-like focus on COVID-19 and has been attached to the Emergency Operations Center. We are providing general info on COVID, and we make sure we track all info we post to credible sources; we are very careful about this. On the SAMCEDA website, you can find information in key areas such as financial relief, business continuity resources, job opportunities, COVID-19 general resources, the SMC Strong Fund, and get newsletter updates. We also conduct daily updates through our newsletter and social media. All 20 communities in San Mateo County share information – a very collaborative environment.
- We put out a business economic impact survey in the third week of March and got data from 1200 businesses as regards what is shelter-in-place doing to your business and where is the greatest need. There is a ten county fund for emergency COVID-19 relief for the most vulnerable populations, a two county fund for Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties but San Mateo County wanted its own fund so it set up the SMC Strong Fund which is resourced and spent within our county. We also have a business continuity action plan that includes among other things financial relief and business resources such as legal, human resource advice and technical assistance. In the beginning small businesses were overwhelmed - mortgages, employees, how to pay taxes rent etc. SAMCEDA helped them identify what can they do for themselves and what outside help is available such as Small Business Administration, Payroll Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster (IDA) loans and State Unemployment, Independent Contractors and Sole Proprietors Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).
- SMC Strong has a Small Business Grant program with three million available, which as of now is broken down by Measure K a county-wide tax measure with two million to assist 8 core service agencies and seven homeless shelters and one million for use by the San Mateo Credit Union which has offices from Daly City to East Palo Alto and will help to get applications, conduct underwriting, process them, and get out the grants
- SAMCEDA did all this starting on Apr 21 when the SAMCEDA Board approved one million for a small business grant then from Apr 21-26 conducted multilingual outreach activities online, briefings and emails then from April 27 at noon the application portal opened for 4 hours that day and then closed on April 29 with 1232 completed applications received. The application review started on Apr 29 and continues ongoing. On May 1, the Credit Union mailed first grant approval letters and by May 11, 142 checks had been mailed with a total $1,400,000 in grant funding.
- Of the 1232 applications completed, Burlingame submitted 144 applications. These applications are time stamped and awarded on a “first come, first served’ basis. If qualified and if they have all documents required funding is distributed in three parts: Measure K grants, city funding and foundation funding. When the business receives the grant and signs the forms, this allows San Mateo County to publish their names. Burlingame got $40,000 in measure K funds, $500,000 in city allocation and $5,000 in foundation/corporate or other allocation and had a total of 54 grants – third largest in San Mateo County. In total among all 20 cities, the total funds so far from all sources are $1,080,000 from Measure K with $1,772,000 m in city allocation and $465,000 from foundations corporate, etc among a total of 365.2 grants countywide. Also, Gilead has given one million and additional individual /family, nonprofit and small business funds come from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
- Over half of the cities in the county have given money to support small business because they are key to the community prosperity and they all really believe that small businesses are important and make their communities so fabulous. Other communities that did not have city funds set aside want to raise money for future contingencies. The Credit Union did not take one dime for overhead and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation lowered operating charge from 5% to 1% and SAMCEDA respects that since they need to keep their doors open.
- The foundation giving breakdown includes the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with $300,00 for Redwood City North Fair oaks, the San Bruno Community Foundation with $150,000 for San Bruno, and the Woodside Community Foundation with $20,000 for area businesses.
- Questions: Nancy – local businesses are suffering and cannot completely open while other parts of country are opening as California is more conservative on this question. Where are we going on opening? Answer – a second survey went out on Monday to businesses to find out what businesses need to reopen and recover. San Jose published an online staff report regarding ability of restaurants to be open with more space less people; the SMC no-business-eviction-for-two-months order expires on May 31 – the whole point of the grant program was to buy two months for businesses to survive so we are looking at how to reopen safely soon. This is definitely on the table. We have to ask ourselves how much longer can businesses stay open and how to balance health and opening.
- Cheri question – what about guidelines for retail stores? Are we looking to include them too? Answer – absolutely, a survey went to all chambers of commerce so recovery measures can be designed with considerations for PPE, additional staff, floor plan redesigns. Rosanne does not like to make decisions in a vacuum.
- Mary realtors are having difficult time. Owner must disinfect; we must hand out or make available masks, gloves, etc. How do we do this? Answer – put that in your response to the survey. To whom do you assign liability? Very difficult
- Julius – how many businesses will close in next 6 months? Answer – across US 60% closures. We hope that will not be the case in SMC. How best to get the data.
- Peter Comarato question – real estate forms require lots of signatures for one showing, which is very onerous as it relates to opening. Can this be simplified? Answer – We can plan enough that we can get it done.
- Francis Boscacci – We have talked about testing what is leadership planning regarding tracing? Answer - County health officer has not yet released info on tracing plans, antibody testing reliability. We should know more soon, but surprised that more has not been done.
- Michael Kimball – What is the percentage of restaurants as a slice of the business community and number of restaurants in SMC. Answer - Restaurants were roughly 30-35% of the 1200 business responses. Will get better answer for you from the County Health Office.
- Charles – What does survey show regarding rent adjustments for commercial businesses such as restaurants and retail stores? Answer – Most owners are lowering rents and using some combination of rent abatement or rent deferment or working on some form of rent forgiveness. However, owners are quite upset about not getting some help from their insurance companies regarding business disruption. This will be the subject of a call with State of California Insurance Commissioner Lara. (Link is provided by Mary in the same email in which she sent out the meeting recording that went out today – May 20. Look for it).
- Fritz – A year from now what would be the positive outcomes? Answer – That would be watching 20 cities and the county collaborate in such an effective way - lots of cooperation and pulling together but will this continue? We will review everything to see what can be done better.
Introduction/Thought for the Day: Cheri looked at a book The Joy Plan regarding how to develop a more positive workplace environment and deal with anxiety under pressure. In the current situation, we experience increases in anxiety and depression. The book describes eight brainwaves and their characteristics and each one of us has a dominant one in which we can find joy. These are the soothing wave, the impacting wave, the synchronizing wave, the standing wave, the rising wave, the expanding wave, the yielding wave, and the intensifying wave. Cheri indicated she thinks this speaks to our life goals and the possibility that finding your dominant wave will calm you. You can do this with family members, which should be fun and helpful to all.
Emily Beach, Mayor of Burlingame and club member, talks about testing sites and recommends you go to the SMC website at www.smcgov.org or Google SMC COVID-19-Testing Page to find COVID/Testing info. Testing capacity is good now. You can get tested at the SMC Events center and mobile sites are set up in Daly City and East Palo Alto. As of Monday, May 18 some restrictions have been eased in the following areas: retail stores for outdoor pickup only; pet grooming; residential cleaning and appliance repairs; offices can open to a certain extent with workers that cannot do their work at home allowed to go to the office but with minimal contact and social distancing and mask guidelines, etc. in place; outdoor museums; car dealer showrooms; swimming pools can open but not locker rooms and swimming must be supervised; child care and camps (stable groups) with restrictions; beaches are open but you cannot drive and park between the hours of 11am and 5pm, although you can walk or bike to the beach. For additional info and details call 211 or go to the SMC website. Question from Bob Doerr regarding many false positive and negatives with the tests; answer – testing is not perfect; we use what is available and nasal swabs are the best they we have now for testing. Testing of certain demographics would be better and SMC is working on this. Also, just because you tested negative today does not mean you cannot test positive the next day. For now, the more tests we do the better data we get. Question from Peter Comarato Question – I have been approached by restaurant owners and asked about closing the Burlingame Avenue approach so they can put out tables and chairs minding rules and regs to restart their businesses. Answer – no sit down service now, looking for clues from state but to prepare for that the economic development sub-committee is putting out a survey in June to business owners to get their views. There may be a need to expand safe pedestrian use of streets to allow more room for sidewalk service. Also Broadway may be looked at too but that is a narrower street so all of this will be examined and there is a lot of support in the community for this idea. We want to get full input then have policy discussions in June. Emily will let everyone know. Peter indicated the owners are dying now; Emily responded we are trying to respond proactively. People want to go out but the virus is still out there and raging. We want are policy to be supportive.
