Recommendation to Accept the Status Report of the City’s Economic Recovery Task Force Activities. (Community Development 256000)
All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Fitzsimmons better always great to see you and thanks for your good work. Okay, counsel, we move on to item six D. Recommendation to accept the status report of the city's economic recovery task force activity. Thank you, Mr. Butler. Yeah, thank you. Did you come up with me? Yeah. Not yet. It's just showing you muted. Hi, Miss Amanda Turkey. Give it a minute. And there. You must have the equivalent of my iPad there. Did you go? Muted. Muted again? No, no, you're good. You get and your screen sharing. Amanda Kirkby will be giving the report. All right. Good evening, Mr. Key. Evening, Mayor and city council members. And thank you, Lois. So, as Lois mentioned, I am here tonight to give a status report on the Economic Recovery Task Force. Next slide, please. So, as you all know, when shelter in place hit in March, it was very necessary to maintain our public health. But it did have a pretty major impact on our businesses and workers. The city took a series of immediate steps to help, and I'm not going to go through all of these here, but they're listed up on the screen. These actions were done under the leadership and support of city council and with the hard work and collaboration of a number of different city departments. Next slide, please. So while these actions were important and necessary, they were primarily reactive in nature. So in May, the Mayor's Economic Development Advisory Panel advised directed city staff to create a COVID 19 economic recovery task force. So it's a ten member task force with members appointed by the city manager. So the goal of the task force is to kind of move a little bit beyond these reactive steps to create a short term mid-term strategy for economic recovery in Alameda. And the Economic Development Advisory Panel also directed staff to focus on our most vulnerable businesses, workers and residents. Next slide, please. So the task force has been meeting since July, just about every other week. We've contracted with the consulting firm Strategic Economics and Beacon Economics to facilitate these meetings and to assist with our data analysis. One crucial source of information for this work has been a series of focus groups that we've been conducting with the sectors listed on the slides. So these groups are really critical to kind of getting in on the ground, understanding of what's going on with our businesses and what their needs are. And you'll see those little stars next to housing and transportation. Those are there because we had not finished those focus groups when we wrote the staff report. So that information is not included here. But I'm happy to answer any questions that council has about that. So next slide, please. So I'm going to go through some of the preliminary findings of the work that are really kind of set the stage for the development of the strategies. And it's tricky. I hate to do this to you, but will you excuse my interruption because I've just been reminded and I don't know how this happened, but it's almost 11:00. So council we have to vote to approve considering new items which are six e. Remember, we have to hit open six F just to continue it and then we have nine A and ten A and so I need somebody to make a motion on that. I move that we work until midnight to get through the rest of the agenda. Okay. So we have a second to that. I'll second, but I'd like to encourage us to be concise with our comments so we can get through the entire agenda. It's a good point. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. May we have a roll call vote with. Council over Jason Knox? Right. I. o.D i. I may or as the Ashcroft, I get carried by five hour rate. And again, I apologize for the interruption. Mr. Keith, the floor is yours again. Okay. So one of our earliest findings was that we heard from the public health department that even with the vaccine, we can expect social distancing measures into 2022. So we heard this pretty early on, and this estimate had a pretty significant impact on how the task force was thinking about the timing of the emergency and the timing of our recovery. We're also seeing a pretty big racial hellscape related to the pandemic in Alameda County. Latin Mex population has the highest rate of infection, followed by the Pacific Islander and black residents. And the black population has the highest rate of deaths due to COVID 19. We're also seeing greater job loss among women, people of color and those without advanced degrees. So we're seeing more women, more black workers, and also more workers with a high school education or less who are filing for unemployment. Next slide, please. From our businesses and nonprofit owners. We're hearing about a lot of confusion and frustration around our county health orders. So couple examples of this are new health orders will be issued on a Friday and that doesn't leave businesses much time to prepare for any changes. Uncertainty about the timing or future health orders that can make it difficult for businesses to plan for reopening. And then also some frustration about the differences between the county and state guidelines, which can cause confusion, which when new changes are announced at the state level, but they don't apply to Alameda County from businesses that have reopened. We're hearing that expenses have increased significantly due to COVID 19, and that has to do with the cost of PPE, the cost of cleaning, and in some cases having to hire staff in order to enforce public health orders. At the same time, their revenues are down because capacity is limited and demand is also down. So we're hearing from many businesses that they're dipping into savings or going into debt to make ends meet. And the ones who were lucky enough to receive federal, state or local aid report that that money is is quickly running out if it hasn't already. So as a result, unless unless conditions change, we do expect to see many more business closures this winter. So one thing that really is making a difference to businesses is access to outdoor spaces, including shared public spaces through the Commercial Streets program. However, there are concerns about the viability of these spaces with winter approaching, and of course, there are many businesses who can't bring their work outdoors. Next slide, please. I'm sorry. Next slide, please. So the hotel and tourism industry has been majorly impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic due to the loss of business and recreation travel. These are they're actually expected to be one of the last to recover with full recovery, not expected till 2023 or 2024. In terms of office space businesses, we're hearing that the impact of the pandemic has been very uneven. There are some businesses, particularly in the life sciences, that are still viable or even thriving, but others who are really feeling the impact, for example, or co-working spaces have still not yet been able to open. In the long term, we're hearing that while there is going to be an increase in remote work, that there will still be demand for physical office space in Alameda. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is the importance of in-person work for creativity and innovation and accountability. Another is that businesses are reporting that their employees actually do want to maintain some kind of presence in the office. And maybe that's not a full week, but maybe that's two or three days out of the week in the office and two or three days at home. And then finally, we also heard that the office stock in Alameda is well suited to COVID recovery. It's low density. There's not many elevators and there's plentiful parking. Next slide, please. So in the childcare sector, we're seeing that many childcare providers have shut down or are experiencing reduced enrollment. And there's the kind of describe the strange phenomenon where they heard a lot of interest from parents at first about when are you going to open up, when can we send our kids back? But when they actually opened, enrollment was much lower than had been planned and they actually had to shut down some of their programs. So there's a real concern that when the pandemic lifts and the demand comes back, that these programs may not be there anymore. One thing we heard across the board in all of the sectors we talked to was about the importance of Internet access and tech literacy for businesses and workers. So we heard this with childcare. You know, they hadn't had ever expected to have maybe support online learning, right? So a lot of them had to expand their Internet capacity to work with that. And we also heard that workers, and particularly those without college degrees, sometimes lack the skills and access to technology that is required to file for unemployment, apply for new jobs, or even just connect with other workers. And finally, we heard a lot about mental health challenges for businesses and workers. And this was another thing that was across all of the groups we spoke with. You know, these folks are under tremendous stress. They are worried about losing their jobs. They're worried about losing their businesses. The business owners are worried about their employees. And everyone's really concerned about making ends meet. And at the same time, they're worried about getting COVID or bringing COVID home to someone who may be more vulnerable in their family or their household. And then on top of that, on top of all this, a lot of these frontline employees are in the position of having to enforce public health orders. So they are dealing with angry or just noncompliant customers. Next, Chris. So during the task force process, it became clear that this wasn't there was a need for immediate assistance assistance. This wasn't something that could wait until after a plan had been developed. There were also a number of activities that were already in process in the city under the leadership of city council and in a number of different departments. I'm just going to go through kind of some of these interim measures here. So the spend local campaign is something we've been working on to try to boost sales for our businesses over the holidays. That's going to be launching on Saturday. Another thing the pandemic really brought out is the importance of businesses talking to each other across, promoting learning from one another, advocating. And so as a result of that, we've been we worked with the Chamber of Commerce to launch a Personal Care Services Coalition. There's also been a massive citywide effort to permit alfresco dining through our Commercial Streets program. And then in terms of mental health, we've been working with a local councilor to schedule a series of group zoom based counseling sessions for business workers and owners that we're hoping to launch in the new year. We have also set up regular, consistent briefings with the county health department, and we've invited other Alameda County cities to join so that we can ask clarifying questions, we can share feedback from our businesses, and also just kind of help to spread the word about public health orders. So as a result, in part from these meetings, the county health has moved to announcing changes in health orders, usually a couple of days in advance so that businesses have time to prepare. And the county has also worked closely with the state to clarify or to provide clarity around the difference between state and county guidelines when those are released. We've also been increasing our communication weekly, bi weekly emails to our businesses. We did a webinar to help provide businesses with assistance and tips on negotiating with their landlords under COVID 19. And finally, as a council as well, we placed a cap on the third party delivery fees for restaurants. So rather than these 25 to 35% use, they're capped at 15%. And that cap went into effect a little over a week ago. Next slide. So in terms of next steps, we're here tonight to provide city council with an update and get your feedback and comments. And then we're working to develop strategies and put together a report during December and January. And we hope to be back in front of you in February or March for approval. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Thanks. Thank you, Miss Piercy. And I just want to note that these regular briefings with county public health actually came about because of the initiative of our own Lois Butler, economic development director. And I know that because every other week there is a county public health briefing for elected officials. And at our last briefing two weeks ago, Colleen Chawla, the director of the county health care services agency, announced that they are now doing these briefings for the economic development directors around the county. And then that was all initiated through the efforts of Alameda City of Alameda. So I think it's probably both. Lois but their enigmatic. Amanda But I think Lois, your name was even mentioned. And so that is not only to the benefit of our businesses, but also countywide. And we just really need to be making sure we're as proactive as we can be. This is the information. Some of the information sharing really made a difference, like not announcing these changes to the county public health officers orders on a Friday when, you know, restaurants and venues like that had to struggle to, uh, to comply. So I think this is really perfectly timed and personally perfectly timed item. Thank you so much for presenting it. Counsel We're being asked to accept the status report, but any comments or questions before we go on the air, before we vote? And then let me just ask really quickly, do we have some of the speakers on the side and. Have one. Of my questions first? Councilmember Odie. I just had one quick question. I wonder if you could share a little bit about the, um, the business assistance program that the county just announced that I think the application deadline is closing at the end of the month. And how are our businesses can kind of access more information on that? Yeah, absolutely. So Alameda County announced the Alameda County Cares Grant program. It opened yesterday. They're providing $5,000, one time grants to businesses located in Alameda County, unincorporated parts of Alameda County. As you mentioned, this closes at the end of the month. We've sent out we have it up on our website. We've sent it out in numerous locations, but I can try to grab the website to read off here if that would help. And folks can always contact us in economic development. We can point them in the right direction. Have we done any work on that type of outreach in other languages? Because a lot of our businesses are owned by folks whose English is not their first language. Yes. So the application provided by the county is available in multiple languages. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head. And we are definitely sharing all of those all of those options. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying questions. Council Vice President, swing by. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciated this a lot. My my one question was, as I was reading The Bullet about experiencing a wave of small business closures, have we done any or considered doing any survey of our small businesses to kind of find out where they are? Both. Are they even surviving? We just got a I just saw all these is on the risk of closing for good apparently according to the news tonight and kind of what their needs are like. Obviously, people are going to want to be a little careful. But I remember talking to businesses. Restaurants were opening over the summer and they were talking about how it's nice they're not making enough money to cover their costs. And they also have these 4 to 6 months of costs that they're going to have to pay back someday and kind of getting a better understanding of what the size and scope of that is so we can maybe make some survey. Question is, have we done are we going to be doing any survey of our smaller businesses, especially in our Main Street shopping areas? That's a great question. When we started this process way back in the spring, there had been a kind of a wave of surveys that had gone out around that time. And we looked at that data, but we were also hearing a little bit of survey fatigue, which I think is why we went more in the direction of focus groups and then also listening to people at our town halls. But I think I think that ongoing outreach is going to be really important to the strategy moving forward. Like we can't stop listening now. So I think incorporating a survey into it in the future is a great idea. Thank you. It's great work. So thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. And that's a great answer to Councilmember Avila. Okay. So the website. The County Grant program is actually administered by the East Bay EDA. So the website is East Bay EDA boards back slash grants for anyone who's looking for that. But my question was, you know, I've noticed with a lot of these small business grants, for instance, with the city grants and then also with the county grants, it's for businesses and it caps them at 25 employees. One of the feedback things that has come up is particularly for daycares and preschools where they might have two locations on island or something like that. With the new COVID requirements, they are having to reduce the ratio of instructors to youth. And so that means in many cases, if you have more than one location, you're going to be exceeding the the the maximum number of employees to qualify. And so my question is, having gotten the feedback that that preschools and daycares are potentially threatened, have we looked at that or have we how have we responded or how are we looking at responding to helping those businesses stay afloat? So with the Alameda Strong grant, you can have two locations and up to 50 employees. The criteria for the East Bay Eddy County Grant was done without input from the cities and so we weren't able to influence that. But with the grants that we have going forward, hopefully we can. Have that additional requirement. One of the things that I did want to let you know is we have a council item coming December 1st, but I understand what that council item, it's for a matching grant from the county. We have to follow the county's criteria. And so we may not be able to include that criteria in with with the request that we will be making. So we can speak to that later. And I will follow up with the with the SBA, EDA, to see if we can shift that criteria. Thank you. And have we do we have industry specific groups like are we. I guess my concern is I think that there's been a lot of outreach. And I know, Lois, you you've personally gone out and talked to businesses on Webster and Park Street, and so is your staff. My question is, what are we doing and how are we reaching out to businesses that are not located in our business districts? So we have used our business license list to try to hit as many businesses as possible. Some businesses exclude their email address, and so we're not able to contact them. But if if they have listed their email address, they should be receiving an email from us when these announcements are being made. Also, through our focus groups, we've been able to contact additional folks and they have been passing the word as well. So for you, that's for rebels. Okay. Thank you. Miss Bella, would you say that the majority of our business license licenses do include an email address? I would say so, yes. Right. Because every day. Did I see your hair? No. Okay. Any further questions? Okay. I understand that we have a public speaker at least. Correct. The spacewalker. She has lowered her hand. So I believe we do not have a public speaker now. I'm sorry. No public speaker. Okay. All right. So any further discussion before we have recommended acceptance of this report tells everybody. I just moved to recommend the acceptance of the status report. There's a lot I'd like to say, but I also want to get onto the rest of the agenda. So. But thank you, Lois, you and your team for everything you've done. All right. And so we can do this by a motion. A motion to recommend. Yes. So, yes. Yes. Okay, we're moving quickly, people. So that was seconded by Vice Chair. That's what I believe. Yes. I'm reading it as such. A move by Councilor Brody, seconded by vice mayor. And that's why we have a roll. Call vote, please. Councilmember Jason Knox. Right. All right, Odie. Hi. Right. I may as the Ashcroft. Hi. That carries by five. Five. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Butler. Ms.. Gherkin, great work and so well needed and timely. So thank you. Keep up the good work. We are now moving on to item six E. Our city manager, Eric Leavitt, is going to recuse himself because he lives in proximity to this project. And there he is. Assistant City Manager Sherry Burton is going to take this staff report. It's very. Welcome. And you want me to read the title? Yeah, actually, I believe they've already passed. I promise. We might as well. Carry the procedure. Public hearing to consider introduction of ordinance approving a Third Amendment to the development agreement by and among the City of Alameda. To our partners ILP and Alta Vista Owner, LLC, governing the Del Monte Warehouse Project located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Sherman Street and Buena Vista Avenue to extend the completion deadline for the Clement extension improvements by one year and authorize the city manager to grant an additional one year extension without further action by the City Council. Our Planning Board.