San Mateo redeploys workers

During this past Monday’s meeting, councilmembers applauded Corbett and city staff generally for their response to the crisis.

“People are really feeling incredible pride for how our city has responded,” said Councilwoman Amourence Lee. “The fact that we are redirecting our staff to do direct services and community-facing services, supporting our nonprofits and businesses — it’s really unique and does set us apart.”

Lee’s sentiments were echoed by each of her council colleagues.

Corbett said a task force has been created to facilitate the redeployment of employees from one department to another or to special city assignments, including business outreach, stimulus funding and community assistance.

Members of the community assistance task force are being given assignments, some of which can be completed from home, with nonprofits including Samaritan House and Second Harvest Food Bank.

“We’re working to expand that as needed to redeploy our employees,” he said.

It was also suggested during the meeting the city would soon give nonprofits the funding it provides annually as well as additional grant funding.

Additional employees have been assigned to the city’s economic development team and they’ve been educated about the programs and assistance available for small businesses, Corbett said. He added information about those resources, including an approved lenders list and answers to frequently asked questions can also be found on the city’s website.

The San Mateo County Economic Development Association, or SAMCEDA, completed a business impact survey and staff has analyzed that information, which it is driving the outreach calls to businesses that are occurring, Corbett said.

“We hope to have 100 direct business contacts this week to go through things like assistance that’s available to small businesses in the form of loans, information for their employees about enhanced unemployment if that’s necessary and information about the commercial rent eviction moratorium,” he said.

The stimulus funding task force is analyzing the federal CARES Act, which has about 45 different buckets of funding, Corbett said. Opportunities for first responders have already been identified. Corbett said the act includes $15 billion in funding for California, but it remains unknown — it’s up to the state — how much funding will be given to cities and counties with populations below 500,000. Cities and counties with that many residents more get a direct allocation, he said.

After waiving rent for tenants on city-owned properties in April, Corbett opted to again waive rents in May. Those tenants collectively pay $13,000 to the city each month.

In other actions taken in the past week, in light of the ongoing state of emergency, Corbett opted to press pause on insourcing fleet services and downtown cleaning.

Metered parking is not being enforced downtown through the end of the shelter-in-place order. Street sweeping in commercial areas, including downtown, will continue, but enforcement won’t for the time being.

“We’ll see how that works,” Corbett said.

For Parks and Recreation, all spring programs are canceled and field and facility reservations are canceled through May. Staff is still assessing whether to cancel summer programs and other special events.

Home delivery of senior lunches via CERT volunteers is being offered starting Monday, and the city is working on expanding its virtual recreation offerings, Corbett added.

As Public Works crews begin to have to devote more workers to the maintenance of infrastructure — only “bare-bones” maintenance was completed the past few weeks — a new policy is in place to ensure workers drive alone to the job, Corbett said.

In other business, San Mateo-based developer Sares Regis reached out to the city for guidance on where to donate $40,000 to help those impacted by COVID-19 and the financial impact of the virus. The city officially recommended that money be split into $10,000 grants to local nonprofits including Samaritan House, Peninsula Family Services, St. Vincent de Paul and the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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