 You are tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm your host, Autumn Labé Renaud, and today is Friday, April 10th. We're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today is the one month mark of doing this show twice a week live. And I guess today are Yolo County Supervisor for District 4, Jim Provenza, and Davis Mayor, Brett Lee. The show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays and repeats at 5 p.m. both days and at noon on Sundays. And you can also listen online at kdrt.org. So I typically use this portion of the show to highlight a whole bunch of community resources, but today I've decided to highlight resources available through this nonprofit, the one I run, Davis Media Access or DMA. In particular, I want to talk for just a minute about a community diary project we're doing here at DMA and KDRT. For every important moment or movement in this country, historians look not only at events, but at how people responded to them. So letters and diaries and other forms of informal documentation do as much to shape the record of an event as the event itself. In this spirit, DMA has launched a project called Life in the Time of COVID Yolo County Community Diary. And we invite you, yes, all of you to help document the history we're making during the COVID-19 pandemic by participating in a collaborative virtual storytelling project here in Yolo County. We launched the project last week and it will remain open until further notice. My take on this is as follows. What we experience as individuals adds to a greater understanding of the crisis we're weathering as a whole. And so I hope you'll join us. Using your cell phone, you're invited to record and upload a brief video, and we do recommend 90 seconds or less that describe some aspect of your experience. So what's it like to work from home or to homeschool your children? How is your business or nonprofit adjusting? How are you reshaping your creative expression? How are you struggling and maybe who's helping you? And what places in Yolo County are soothing your socially distanced soul? These videos can be serious, humorous, informative. They can just be a video of a beautiful place. So it's quick, easy, free, and open to anyone in Yolo County. And the more people participate, the better the story we can tell. So please go visit davismedia.org slash diary to upload. And DMA will aggregate the videos into small-themed collections such as business, schools, the environment, nonprofits, etc. And we'll host them on YouTube. The segments may also air on DCTV or KDRT, and each week we'll highlight particular collections on social media. And I also want to share that effect if this week DMA staff will offer technical assistance by email. You can email info at davismedia.org on Mondays between noon and 6 or Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. And a staff member will get back to you. And also in the works, short webinars on helpful topics such as using Zoom for meetings and events, getting good audio, using remote technology, and more. There's actually a lot more coming down the pipe. I'll share more soon. And finally, after holding down the KDRT Fort this past month, I'm delighted to share that KDRT programmers are beginning to return to the airwaves. While they still can't come in and use the studio, our staff has been helping many of them produce fresh content remotely using a variety of tools. Visit KDRT.org for the schedule. But welcome back so far to a constant grin, Davis Garden Show, high country music, jazz after dark, Meraki Radio, and music connections, and there will be many more to come. And we've, speaking for myself, I've missed you all. There's much more in development, as I said, but this is what I can share today. And one more note before we take our first call, and that's that the Big Day of Giving is coming up May 7th. Normally this month I'd be deep in planning for Big Day at the Dock, the huge community event that DMA developed five years ago and has staged in partnership with the Davis Live Music Collective, the Davis Phoenix Coalition, and Sudwork Brewing Company, among others. And while we simply can't do the event this year, many nonprofits, including Davis Media Access, including our upstairs neighbors, Cool Davis and Tree Davis, will be looking for community support on May 7th. And we hope that those who can will support. You can learn more at Big Day of Giving.org. Let's take a moment for music before our first call. We're back. Hello. And we're back. And we're going to be welcoming a call from Yellow County Supervisor for District 4, Jim Provenza. He's seeking his fourth term as Supervisor and faces a runoff election with challenger Linda Dios in November. Meanwhile, he's busy making things happen at the county. Hi, Jim. Thanks for joining us today. Hi. Thanks for having me on. Sure. We've interviewed quite a few people from various county departments over the past month with oversight of everything from courts to property tax collections. The county's workload must be staggering. So what are some of the things you're working on right now? Well, I've been working very hard on the, with the Yellow Community Foundation on the COVID-19 Relief Fund. It's a joint project between the county and the community foundation. And we're working there with Hiocha Dihi, the major hospital systems. And it looks like we'll be working with a number of businesses as well. Right. So let's talk about this fund and the intent behind it. I think you know that some of us were talking on Facebook, some of us nonprofit leaders a few weeks ago about kind of the lack of support for nonprofits in the situation. And then the news about this fund came out. So great timing there. Yes. And in fact, that's one of the purposes of the fund is to help the existing nonprofits in two ways. One is to have a system of giving grants to nonprofits where they are in particular hardship or have a particular need because of the COVID-19 crisis, but also to provide technical assistance and assistance in, for example, seeking the loans from the federal government, which are available for nonprofits, and navigating through what is a really complex system to get what help is available out there. Right. So tell me about the scope of the fund. I know that the county board of supervisors ceded it, but what are you envisioning in terms of how big the fund will get and who are some of the other participants that you can talk about at this point? Well, we were hoping to get to a million dollars fairly soon. We had the county put in 250,000. The city of Davis just put in 50,000. And we are active. We will be actively seeking large donations. We're not. We're intentionally not competing with existing foundations. We don't want to do anything that would affect existing nonprofits' ability to raise funds. So we are going to donors who might be willing to donate large amounts to deal with the total crisis and not be the regular donors of the other nonprofits. So we are working to get the cities on board. The city of Davis, of course, has said that they're on board and the other cities are considering it probably next week. And, of course, Yochitie is part of this effort, and we're asking for assistance from them. We will have a steering committee with us at the staff level to help develop the grant system. The elected officials will serve on a really what is considered an advisory committee to identify needs in the community. It's really gaps and holes that aren't covered anywhere else. And then we'll have another committee with retired elected officials and business and other community leaders to help with the fundraising. So we will be releasing an action plan next week that will detail all this. I've also been working with the Travis Credit Union Foundation. They are going to announce their grant. I believe it's something like a million dollars with another four million in matching grants. And they asked me to identify needs in our community. So I have been working very hard to make sure that they know about the needs in our county. They, of course, cover a five-county area. Their grants will be going to the five-county area, but they were particularly interested in making sure that yellow counting was covered in that process. That's good news. We have an extraordinary number of nonprofits in this county. I think I heard a figure of somewhere around 1600. And, of course, they range in all sizes from operated by a single person to quite large. But all of us are facing similar challenges that are normal events, including fundraisers and awareness raisers are shut down. We're concerned about our donors who have taken individual financial hits and may not be able to support in the same way. So first, thank you for you and the Board of Supervisors for this work that is going on. I have gotten a couple of questions from people who knew I'd be talking to you today. And one of them was, I know you said you don't want to hit individual donors who typically contribute to nonprofits. But my question is, will individuals, if they are moved, be able to contribute to this fund, or is this strictly a government and large business-funded opportunity? No, individuals will, and there will be a button on the webpage to donate. But we're not seeking out the smaller donations. We're, in fact, helping the existing nonprofits to pursue them and to come up with strategies, as you say, if their traditional donors can't give or what's the strategy for getting money elsewhere? When you can't do a live fundraiser, how do you do a virtual fundraiser? How do you convince people that they should still be giving when there isn't a particular event to go to? Or can we do virtual events with a Zoom event? There's lots of alternatives, and I think that we can, by getting everyone together and combining the knowledge, can come up with some approaches that may be quite effective. Right. Will the site and the ways for nonprofits to apply, will that be hosted on YoloCounty.org, or will it be a separate site? I think it will be on the Yolo Community Foundation sites, and there'll be links from the Yolo site. The grants are expected to range between $5,000 and $30,000, with the ability of a nonprofit to come back for an additional grant as the needs arise. And the goal is to be able to get the money out there, make a decision within two to four weeks of an application. Okay, and when will applications open? We're going to publish the action plan next week, and then we should be able to announce that, but I'm not certain of the exact date, but it's going to be fairly soon. Okay, when you make that public, I'll be sure to share it here on the show, too. Great. We will be talking about this at our board meeting on Tuesday. Okay, and you're also managing remote meetings. Are you using Zoom for that? We are. I've joked that it's a challenge for the boomers to get on board with that. It's the first time I've ever done one, but actually I find it's fairly simple. One of the things that was an issue for us is we kept telling people, well, hit the raise hand button, and what we needed to say was there's a button before that that you have to push. You have to push the button that says participants first, and I just attribute that to boomerism, but we're fixing that. Well, I think we're all learning new ways to do things right now. Try running a community media organization remotely. It's been fun. Right. What other things? We have just a couple of minutes. So what other kinds of concerns are really coming through from your constituents? Anything you'd like to highlight? Well, there's been a lot of questions because the order sometimes is fairly general, and there's a lot of questions as to how it applies in particular situations. But one of the things that came up was, well, what about a business that isn't an essential function, but all they're doing is delivering? Like for example, Astralitias flowers was delivered, and their question was can we continue to deliver, and we posed that question to our staff, to our health officer. And one of the issues there was, well, the big companies are doing that. They're delivering, they've been doing it, whether it's Costco or Amazon, they're delivering items, so why would we exclude our local businesses from that? And so the answer came back was no, the local businesses can continue to do that if they observe all of the distancing and all of the protections that would normally apply, and they're leaving the items outside of someone's door, they're not approaching the door to talk to people, they're just calling and saying, hey, your item is there, come out and get it. And so that's the type of thing that the board members have been able to field those types of questions, other things, questions come in, and we realize there's nothing we can do about it, although it's inconvenient because we're trying to make sure that people don't congregate and that large groups of people aren't together, so some of the things we've had to say no to. But overall, I think the board members have been able to, through being in close touch with constituents, been able to deal with those issues. Another that came up was what about notarizing documents like somebody is doing their will or their trust and it didn't go through before the current crisis, and obviously at a time like this people want those things to be completed and came up with a, worked with a notary to come up with a procedure of having a table outside the office and no one to approach at the same time and everything to be wiped out afterwards. So there's ways to do things within the rules that keep our ongoing essential operations going, and so that I think has been a role of all the board members and county staff as well as the health officer. And then of course, we pose questions as they come up while trying not to pose too many questions because they have such essential work to do. Sure. Okay, what's the best way for people to reach you, your constituents to reach you if they have questions? Well, they can send me an email at jprobenza at yolocounty.org where they can text or call me at my cell phone, which is 530-601-7843. Great. Well, we appreciate your work, especially on the nonprofit front and your accessibility to making yourself available by selling an email. Thanks for calling in today, and let's have you back down the road to see how the fund is developing and how that's going. Sure, I'd be happy to do that. All right, thanks so much. That was Supervisor Jim Provenza. He represents the 4th District in Yolo County. We're going to hear a little bit of music as we get set up for our next call. Okay, for our next call, Davis Mayor Brett Lee has been a frequent guest on shows here at DMA over the years, and he's here today to talk about the city's response to the COVID-19 virus. Welcome, Brett. Thanks, Autumn. How are you doing? How are you and your family keeping? We're doing well. As you know, I have a 11-year-old son, and normally this would be spring break, but spring break without the travel. But the past few weeks have been kind of interesting. We've been doing some online exercises and actually just spending a little more time together than normal, which is a good thing. Yeah, there is an upside to some of that, right? Yeah. So the Davis City Council's meeting this Tuesday was all about the COVID response, and I'm hoping you'll share with us a few of the key takeaways from the meeting. Yeah, I would say we started out the meeting by having Dr. Ron Chapman from the Yellow County Department of Public Health give us an update on the situation. And I would say that we're very fortunate in Davis to have the county having a well-staffed and professional public health department, and the cities within Yellow County are following the lead and guidance of the county. And so we're all kind of on the same page working together in a coherent plan. So I think it's important that, you know, Davis, Woodland, Westsac, you know, we're all on the same page. I mean, it would be kind of silly or counterproductive if one city did one thing and another city did another. Sure. So we're, you know, the county's been very instrumental in that, helping us have a cohesive, comprehensive, science-based plan. And so the county's really updated us. And, you know, the latest thing that we've seen in the past, call it a few days, not quite a week, is this change in view from the CDC on the use of face coverings. Right. And so Dr. Chapman talked to us a little bit about that. And it's kind of a nuanced instruction. And so I think many people found that informative. Just for the listeners who may not have heard the meeting, essentially, the idea is masks, or N95 masks, should be reserved for the people on the front lines dealing with the coronavirus situation, for instance, medical personnel or fire folks, things like that, where it's essential that they have these masks. And because of a variety of reasons, those masks are in short supply. And so what the public is being asked to do is make use of face coverings, which are different. These are sort of more of a cloth-like material, which is mainly designed to prevent the transmission from the wearer to others. So the idea is that sort of a fabric that prevents you, like if you were to sneeze, the water droplets don't spray all over the place. It really just contains that. And so the face coverings are meant to protect others, not necessarily to protect yourself. Right. And we're starting to see that here in Davis, businesses such as I know Nugget Markets will be mandating that their shoppers wear face coverings beginning next Monday. Yeah. And so that's a good thing. The science is showing that this would be a way to reduce transmission. So you can imagine, I think the people on the front line, when you think about it, you definitely have to include the supermarket checkers. There are hundreds of people go through their lines every day. And many of the markets have taken some steps to protect them. But that additional protection of requiring shoppers to wear face coverings, I think, is a positive. So I was just talking with Jim Provenza, a county supervisor, about the relief fund for nonprofits. And I know the city took some action there on Tuesday. Yes. We've set aside $50,000 to join in with our other partners at the various cities in the Yellow County and the county itself to create a fund to help some of the nonprofits that are going through some struggles. And the idea here is rather than have to deal with all the individual requests on a piecemeal basis, we would have a better, more comprehensive approach to this by partnering with the other cities and the county to create a fund. And there would be sort of a centralized point for nonprofits to reach out to. So it simplifies their efforts, and it just makes it easier to evaluate the request. Speaking as someone who runs a nonprofit, we appreciate this very much. Does the city have a point person for that particular effort? I'm sure we do, but the name is not springing to mind. We have, there's an emergency operations control group, and the tasks are divided amongst many individuals. The person taking the lead on that is Darren Pytel. And most of the city manager's staff, they're actively involved with that. And I understand you'll be writing a letter to Congressman Garamendi about additional economic stimulus. When I interviewed him last week, we talked about the kinds of hits that city and county governments will be taking due to the crisis. Yeah. So one of the things, the relief efforts that have been sponsored by the federal government are very much appreciated. One of the things they did is they set aside money for cities to help deal with the crisis. But what they did is they limited that aid to cities of populations 500,000 or greater. Obviously, Davis is not 500,000. She's definitely well under 500,000 people. And so our hope is that the next round of federal support will acknowledge the fact that there are many, many, many smaller municipalities that are having substantial financial challenges. This idea of only cities above $500,000 being eligible for some of these grants and disbursements doesn't make a lot of sense. And out of the gate, Congress did their best to cover most bases. Certainly, yeah. But now we've had a little more time to look and see what was passed. And yeah, we definitely do want to make sure that there are resources for the city of Davis as well as other cities like ourselves. Right. Brett, I want to thank you for coming on. We're actually running out of time. And I didn't get to half the things I would like to chat with you about. So we'll need to have you back too. But thank you. Okay. Well, I just want to express my appreciation to the public of Davis. I think we're doing a very good job with social distancing. And I remain optimistic that our city will carry on. And I'm happy to come back anytime. Autumn, I appreciate the opportunity. Great. Thanks so much for your leadership. Take care.