SANTA CRUZ — Amid mounting calls from business leaders for a seat at the table to plan how to safely reopen the local economy, Santa Cruz County is set to launch an economic recovery team that appears aimed at doing exactly that.
Santa Cruz County spokesman Jason Hoppin confirmed the economic recovery team is in the works and said a formal announcement is likely forthcoming Friday.
“We recognize that economic recovery is a very important part of this, and we want to provide a venue between the health care leadership and the business community,” Hoppin said.
Who will be invited to the economic recovery team, which is expected to be formed next week, couldn’t immediately be confirmed.
Business and community leaders involved with or briefed on the plans said the team will mostly be made up of representatives from local industries, who would help advise health officials on industry-specific guidelines and best practices — and more broadly, would function as a conduit for information to flow to and from businesses and county health officials.
Susan True, CEO of Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, first confirmed the plans Wednesday, saying she had been cleared by county officials to discuss them in advance of the interview.
“We are going to form an economic recovery team across industry leaders,” True said. “It will be a small team. Its purpose will be to work with Dr. Newel to think about, at first, the governor’s stage two businesses — we’re not talking about huge events, yet — and to identify what the safe practices will be, how we will really reopen.”
That confirmation prompted optimism from some business representatives, who in interviews just a day earlier had raised concerns about their lack of involvement in — and awareness of — the county’s plans.
“Now that we have a means of communicating, we’re optimistic,” Santa Cruz County Business Council CEO Robert Singleton said Wednesday.
To date, there has been little if any formal communication between local business leaders and the county health officials who ordered the bulk of the local economy on ice.
According to Casey Beyer, CEO of the Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce, there has been “no communication. Zero.”
The clamor for more involvement has been mounting since many local businesses closed their doors or drastically scaled down operations, sending unemployment claims skyrocketing in the wake of Santa Cruz County’s first shelter-in-place order, which took effect March 17.
As Singleton sees it, the impact of the order to the county’s economy has been “borderline cataclysmic.”
Unemployment in Santa Cruz County shot up to 7.9% in March. April data is not yet available, but a University of the Pacific report projects unemployment could exceed 19% in Santa Cruz County in May.
A single week, March 22-28, saw more than 8,300 unemployment claims filed in the county — more claims than were filed in any single month during the Great Recession and subsequent recovery.
Some local businesses, such as 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, have shuttered, while other eateries forge ahead with takeout orders. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is indefinitely closed and confirmed this week it is canceling its summer concert series.
“Everyone was unprepared for an order of this magnitude to essentially shut down the entire economy — beyond essential businesses — and it’s been devastating,” Singleton said Tuesday.
The county’s order has since been eased to allow more low-risk business activity such as construction and auto and real-estate sales. And starting Friday, curbside pickup for a number of retailers is also permitted.
Further easing of restrictions, health officials have said, will require more widely available COVID-19 testing and increased capacity for contact-tracing and quarantine. Broad outlines of those requirements were released last week as part of the SAVE Lives Santa Cruz County initiative, mirroring guidelines detailed by Newsom.
Last week, Beyer, Singleton and other local business representatives sent a letter to county Health Officer Dr. Gail Newel. The April 28 letter requested more communication and to move forward with a conversation around what it would take to reopen specific local industries.
“Santa Cruz County continues to perform well in adhering to the Stay at Home and Shelter in Place orders, however, many local businesses, their employees, and other strategic partners are continuing to suffer as a result of the tremendous economic impacts that have followed,” the letter states, in part. “While we recognize the importance of continuing these valuable practices in deference to, and with respect for public health, we believe that a more comprehensive analysis and planning effort needs to take place for when and how these orders should be loosened, especially in light of the seasonal nature for many of our County’s largest industries and companies.”
In a joint interview Tuesday — before plans for the economic recovery team were confirmed — Beyer, Singleton and Santa Cruz Works Executive Director Doug Erickson said they had yet to receive a formal response.
“What I’m hearing from a lot of the small businesses that I represent is they’re wanting to honor the SIP (shelter in place) from both the governor and our public health officer, but they have really no idea what that means in terms of a go-forward plan,” Beyer said Tuesday.
His view was largely echoed by Singleton and Erickson.
“Businesses need to be a part of the conversation and know they’re being heard,” Erickson said.
Singleton said Tuesday that getting back to a semblance of economic normalcy would require confidence on the part of business owners and investors. That won’t easily happen without more clarity around how health officials are looking at easing economic restrictions, he said.
“I don’t necessarily need a date when shelter-in-place is going to end, but I need some kind of framework for understanding how your decision-making is being done, and we haven’t even gotten that,” Singleton said at the time.
“I know the decision behind shelter in place has been a paramount focus on public health,” he added. “But I really wish they would expand the definition to be public health and well-being, because while someone may be healthy, if they’re struggling to provide for their family, if they’re struggling to like make ends meet and get food on the table, that’s not a wonderfully healthy lifestyle.”
Confirmation of the economic recovery team plans came the next day following inquires to county officials and True, the Community Foundation CEO — one of many sign of how quickly the landscape of coronavirus response can shift.
Those plans, according to Singleton, now provide reason for optimism.
“I feel like we’ve been included now in the conversation and there’s a clear path forward for businesses to be having these discussions we’ve been seeking,” he said. “It took a little bit for these channels of communication to open, but I feel pretty good that we now have a legitimate mechanism for business input on best practices for phase two of shelter in place.”
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