 Hello everyone and thanks for joining us. I'd like to welcome you to the coronavirus guidance and resources for Santa Cruz County webinar. This webinar is being presented today by the Santa Cruz County Office for Economic Development in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center and the County's Workforce Development Board. My name is Andy Constable. I'm the Economic Development Manager for the county. And with me is Brandon Napoli, the director of the Small Business Development Center and Andy Stone, the director of the County's Workforce Development Board. I'll be speaking to you in the order that you see before you on the agenda. Excuse me. And what we're going to try to do is cover the most up to date information that is available to help lessen the impact to businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic. And what available resources exist for businesses such as access to funding and workforce issues related to closures or layoffs. Lastly, after the presentations, we will be answering as many questions as we can. So before we get started, to make this information is widely available and to reach the whole of Santa Cruz County. This webinar is available through a host of broadcast options, which includes CTV's YouTube and Facebook channels, the county's Facebook page, and CTV's Comcast Channel 25 and Charter Channel 71, both of which will be available for replay. So, so in getting here, I guess the question is, sorry guys, how we got here basically the county issued a response to the concerns over the coronavirus by putting a shelter in place issue. And in issuing that we did so on March 16, which allowed for certain essential businesses to continue operating. As of yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a statewide shelter in place order to further limit the spread of the COVID virus. Governor, Governor Newsom's order has no set in date and supersedes the county's in date of April 7. The governor stated, if I told you would be over in two weeks, you would think it would be over too soon. However, it won't last months. With that in mind, we will be working to bring you the most current information as possible, including updates on the governor's order and when it will end. In regard to the two orders, we've received numerous inquiries about which definition of essential businesses is to be applied locally. It is our understanding that the that the county's shelter in place order is consistent with the governor's order regarding the definition of essential businesses. Please know that the businesses identified as essential that can remain open were intended to help reduce potential exposure to the virus and limit its spread. I encourage business owners to carefully read the order to best understand how it applies to your specific business. We know that it is impactful to all businesses, but it needs to be taken seriously to help prevent the further spread of the virus. A little later in my presentation, I will provide you with direction on where to find the county's shelter in place order. We recognize this is a lot of very critical information. So if you have more questions about the order and the coronavirus, please contact the county's call center at 831-454-4242 for the next 30 hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Outside of those hours, you can also contact the United Way of Santa Cruz County by calling 2-1-1 or texting COVID-19 2-1-1, 2-1-1. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the county board of supervisors on March 24th will be taking action to put forth an urgency ordinance to limit residential and commercial evictions through May 31st of 2020. With the further support of our local businesses, the county's Office of Economic Development has been working to provide up-to-date information and resources to help limit the impact to our businesses. A few examples of what we've completed to date are a guidance for business resources page on our website, which can be found at www.sccytality.org. This page provides links to the most up-to-date federal, state, local, and other resources that are available to help Santa Cruz County businesses. This information is constantly updated due to the fluid nature of the coronavirus pandemic, so please check back often. We're also posting information and articles related to business resources on our LinkedIn page and on the county's Facebook page. Obviously, today's webinar is another source which, as I previously indicated, will also be available for viewing and will include information specifically on funding sources and workforce-related issues for employers. Lastly, in conjunction with the local cities, the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce, and other various business partners and associations, we'll be providing an expanded webinar on Friday, March 27th. We'll be making the announcement regarding the time and what will be discussed probably mid next week. Before we move on to Brandon and Andy's presentation, I wanted to give you some directions here in terms of where you can get some of the information I just mentioned. This is a screen grab of our economic development website, and you see the two red buttons that are there. The one on the left, which is coronavirus-specific information, and the one on the right is the guidance to businesses, which has basically a host of links. And what that looks like is right there, and unfortunately the page is so large now because of the amount of resources that are out there that we captured it in two different pictures here. Right here, what I've done also is to outline the Small Business Administration, or SBA, source for funding. And on this second screen grab of the same page is the Shelter and Place Order, which is highlighted in the red there. Lastly, just so that everybody knows it, businesses can ask their customers to help them out by the list that's represented there on the side by buying a gift card or shopping online. And there's a host of little things that they can do. So with that, I'll pass it off to Brandon Napoli, who's Director of the SBDC. Thank you, Andy. My name is Brandon Napoli. I'm the Director of the Small Business Development Center. The SBDC has been in Santa Cruz County for about 35 years. We're a non-profit that is part of a nationwide association that is supported by the SBA, the County and City of Santa Cruz, a workforce development here in Santa Cruz as well. We have a team of advisors specialized in different aspects of business. We offer free advising to all types of federally legal businesses from anything from how to start a business to grow that business, financial assistance, acquiring lending or debt financing, also help with marketing and HR. Again, this is a free service that's offered here in Santa Cruz County and that first slide and has our contact information. Five things that I want to go over and I've brought on a colleague, Scott Rogalski, who's a specialist in providing access to capital for small businesses is the first thing is making your business model agile, then understanding your numbers, extending your cash flow, working with banks, and then applying for the SBA disaster relief loan. So the first thing that businesses can do right now is put their business model on paper and be able to talk through every part of it, write out what it is, what needs to change or what is likely to change. Be honest with what you know and what you don't know and please ask for help. The second thing is understanding your numbers, put them on paper. You should expect that accounts are going to be very busy. Play out different scenarios to know where you could be if different assumptions happen. Again, this is something that we can help you with. The third thing is doing different best practices to extend your current cash flow. Two of the key areas to achieve financial stability are planning and communication. It's important to have a solid plan in place for your cash, expense reduction, payment extensions, partial or whole rent abatement, vendor extension for merchandise, employees, etc. And to constantly communicate to all stakeholders in your business, employees, banks, vendors, customers. My experience is if you communicate, this will help you find a solution and make this period as tolerable as possible. Be proactive in getting through this. Don't sit back and hope to wait for someone to contact you. It's your business and your responsibility. Make positive things happen. I want to pass Patan to Scott Rogalski who's going to talk about working with lenders as well as the SBA disaster relief loan. Awesome. Thank you very much, Brandon, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for jumping on this call, taking the time out of your day to get through some of these great information. So when you're working with lenders for any existing loans that you have or whether it's a credit card or a line of credit, a term loan, a building loan. Really ask for deferred payments or ask for them to be a little bit more lenient with you. Maybe do some interest only type programs or maybe lower the interest and possibly extend the payment dates. Most SBA loans are, if you have a current SBA loan right now, most SBA loans are being deferred anywhere from 90 to 180 days as far as loan payments. Certain lenders are allowing that. As far as applying for new funding, there's a comprehensive list of SBA lenders that's on our website for the Santa Cruz SBDC and we're here. Brandon's team is here. I do some regional work to help Brandon out. We're here just to package loans all day long. The biggest help for businesses right now is this SBA Disaster Relief Loan Fund. This is money directly from SBA that they're lending out to businesses and consumers, but for this call it's regarding business loans. These are businesses that have an economic injury where they're either closed down, they're ordered to close down, or their income has decreased since January 31st. The declaration date is January 31st. So anything after that February, March and then going forward the next six months, how much income loss are they having from their business being closed or shut down or minimal people coming in? So some of the eligibility within this, there's this no credit elsewhere. So the business needs to show that they're unable to cash flow without a hardship. This kind of excludes retirement accounts, personal residence. So if you can get business elsewhere like at a bank or something like that or a micro lender, then go ahead and do that. If you can't qualify for that at this time, then this SBA Disaster Loan is probably the best for you. So you must be a small business under the SBA size standards. And we're not going to go over that right now, but Brandon and his team, they have those specific requirements or parameters for you. So personal guarantees are required for anybody that's 20% or more ownership of the company. And then if you're part of a different entity, so if you own multiple companies, you have to apply separate for each entity. And if you're declined, SBA is going to tell you, they're going to tell you why you're declined. And then you could meet with an SBDC director, sorry, like Brandon or somebody from his team and we can help you resubmit so that you have better chance to get approved. So ineligible applicants, so it's just changing daily, but some franchises are not applicable. And it's always determined on a case by case for this. If you defaulted on a federal debt, like another SBA loan, or like a student loan, then you won't qualify for this loan. At this time, no agricultural businesses and for concern to establish post disaster. If a small concern was established after the impeding economic impact becoming apparent, the owner assumed the risk and did not incur economic injury. So for terms, as far as applying for this loan, there's some other terms, but this is the most important information. So you can apply for anywhere from $5,000 to $2 million. A lot of people have been asking us, how much do I apply for? Well, it's a little broken up, but this is what we're telling people. So if whatever it takes monthly to operate your business, like if you're closed, then what it took normally to operate your business before you're closed per month. So that's like any working capital needs. It's paying your lights, paying your payroll, your advertising, your rents. It's anything that you pay monthly to operate your business. It's this money can't be used to refinance existing debt, but it can be used to if you have monthly payments of loans and that's like, you know, $500, $2,000 a month. It could be used for that too, just not paying off the existing debt 100%. So if it takes $10,000 to operate your business just so you can keep the doors open. If that's like your, you know, a break even point, then you would take $10,000 times it by six months. We're asking you to project six months that you would apply for 60 grand. And so most of these loans are 30 years, but some loans are being offered at 15 years. The rate is 3.75% for for profits. If you're a nonprofit, that's 2.75%. There's no fees, including free payments. You can pay it off anytime with no fees. The payments are deferred for 11 months. The first payment is not due until the start of the 12th month. So you don't have to start paying on it right away, which is really awesome. Credit, it's not defined on what your, what the minimum credit score is or needs to be. It's case by case, but you should have some worthy credit, meaning like your current or they're getting to kind of look at it. They're getting to kind of look at, look at your, sorry, your character of your credit and how you operate it, your patterns. As far as use of proceeds, so any, any working capital needs, like I said collateral, if you're applying for anything under $25,000, there's no collateral. They won't take a lien on any of your assets. If you're applying for over $25,000, they're going to do a UCC, which is a universal commercial code. It means that they're going to take a blanket lien on all your business assets, like your, you know, your equipment, your desk, your chair, stuff like that, all that. Disbursement of funds is it's not controlled. They just give you a lump sum. They just send the money to you. As far as the process, there's this awesome link. It's being updated daily and it's being there's forgiven more for more forgiveness on you applying and possibly filling out the application wrong. SBA is going to case manager will call you or email you and tell you, hey, you filled out this this line wrong or this this page wrong. So they're not immediately declining you if you if you filled out the application wrong. But this is the website. This is where you go. This is where you apply. If you're having trouble kind of filling out the forms you can meet with SBDC and Brandon's team and they can help you. The process decision is they say they say that from the time that you apply to the time that they tell you if you're approved or not is about two to three weeks. And funding could be within that same time. It could be about four weeks before you get the funding. So they give you a case manager, they call you and they talk to you during that time. If you ask for anything under $25,000, they have made a commitment to fund you within five days. So I had a client that applied on Monday for $17,000 and he got he got told today that the check is in the mail. So the they're just they're just sending out this money under 25 is the easiest to to get approved. So the documentation. So this we have Brandon and I just got the most updated information on this today, actually. So if you're a sole proprietor, there's an SBA form 5C. We have hard copies of all these these forms that can help you fill them out. We recommend that you meet with either you do this at home by yourself at your place of business or you meet with an advisor SBC advisor and sit down and fill all the forms out manually so that when you go online and it's a lot easier. That's what we're recommending. For if you're not a sole proprietor, then you fill out the SBA form 5 and you select economic injury as your disaster. It's not. That's the only box you have to click nothing else. So tax returns. They're only required if you're asking for over $500,000. So that's really awesome. So it's not as much paperwork as it normally takes to get to get a regular loan. If the most recent federal tax return has not been filed so 2019 hasn't been filed, then you're going to need to submit a year end profit and loss statement and balance sheet for 2019. You're also going to need current year to date profit and loss. So that would be from like January 1 to you know today for 2020 of how your current year to date is is looking. And then the additional filing requirements. There's a form called 1368 where you can provide monthly sales figures will generally be required when requesting an increase in the amount of economic injury. And then some other documents. So these are the only documents that you that you need to fill out just like these five that we have here on this list. And the 4506 T is is for the applicant was the business. This is the form that you need to really know how to fill out because if you fill it out wrong then they can't collect your taxes. So the 4506 T form is a it's a universal form that they're once you fill it out and sign it. SBA is going to contact the IRS and get a copy of your taxes. That's why they're not asking for taxes, which is also really cool that that's there so to do that so for all owners each principal that owns 20% or more. Or that is a general partner or managing member each owner that owns 50% or more of another business. So if you if you own 100% of one business but you have ownership in other businesses. Then it's over 50% then you have to also do a 4506 T for that as well. The personal financial statement is just talks about you personally as a as a person, not your business. What assets you have like a home and car and what liabilities do you have a schedule liabilities is for your is for your business. Great. Thanks Scott now we're going to pass it off to Andy stone director of workforce development. Thanks Brandon. So today I'm going to talk about some available employment resources for you. To start off, let me just tell you who we are that were the workforce development board is a public private partnership here in Santa Cruz County, and we create programs and strategies that provide residents with a pathway to better wages and meaningful work. You may typically know us as a career center where we provide career advice and scholarships, but we also provide services to businesses as well. We operate three career centers the aforementioned career center centers in the county at these locations here. Today I want to dive into some of the coronavirus resources available for business. And there are some links in here. This presentation will be available on the scc vitality.org website. And you can follow them there so I'll just follow what I have here start with workplace health and safety. So, for information protecting workers from COVID-19 refer to the Cal OSHA guidance on coronavirus, as well as businesses and employers can visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website for help with planning and responding to COVID-19. If you are in a situation where you have to reduce your employees work hours, I suggest you look at the unemployment insurance work sharing program. This program will allow you to seek an alternative to layoffs so you'll be able to keep your employees by reducing their hours and some of that wage loss will be made up by unemployment insurance. More details can be found at Edds website. If you're looking at a potential closure or layoffs so we're talking permanent layoffs here as a result of the coronavirus or actually as a result of any business downturn please contact Alinda Barr, our business services manager at area code 831-763-8872. And she has resources available to for you to share with your employees. And if it is at all possible to help avert layoffs, we have resources that we can connect you with as well. As far as tax assistance goes, I think Brandon mentioned this earlier, but employers that are experiencing a hardship can request a 60 day extension to file their state payroll reports. And there is a number listed on the screen here for Edd that I'd recommend you call if you have any questions. So for your workers, looking at some of the different options for for payments is a result of COVID-19 disability insurance would be one of them and that is available for anyone that has experienced wage loss due to the virus. And, and you need a medical, medical verification of that paid family leave is available to care for an ill or quarantine family member and unemployment insurance insurance and a couple instances you can use it here one would be if your child school is closed and you have to miss work or if your hours have been reduced, you can apply for unemployment insurance to help offset some of that loss. Specifically filing the uninsured unemployment insurance claim. I'd recommend that you go to the website first which is www.edd.ca.gov. The phones have been overwhelmed this week. I would recommend you try the online site first and if you have difficulty there then try calling the number listed below. They're only available from 8am to noon at that number so that's something to keep in mind. And then you also have the option of mail or mailing or faxing in your unemployment insurance application and some information is available at the links that we've provided there as well. And if, if you would like to share the YouTube videos at the bottom of the screen. It provides a how to for applying for unemployment insurance online and it's available in several different languages. And if you are self employed or an independent contractor, there are some resources available for you here. One of them is this disability insurance elective coverage. As its name suggests it is elective coverage and you may have it. So that would be something to look at first, but you also may be eligible for unemployment insurance. Possibly you were employed with an employer who made contributions in the past five to 18 months. So it's possible that those contributions could qualify you for unemployment insurance now. And Ed recommends that either way you try applying for unemployment insurance because grants that come out later may request to see that you've been denied for unemployment insurance before moving forward. So that is what I have to present and I'll hand it back over to Andy Constable. Thanks Andy really appreciate it. At this point, we've been logging all the questions that have come in as we've been talking. And Peter Dent loves this here that's going to fire off some questions that he's been able to capture just so that everybody knows we will log everything that has been sent to us here and any follow up questions and we will do our best to try to get back to everyone with answers if we don't answer them today. So bear with us, but I'll turn it back to Peter here. So there were quite a few questions about whether or not the presentation would be made available and if it would include active links. So the answer to that one is easy. Yes, we're going to post the both the presentation as probably as a PowerPoint or PDF on our website as well as we'll provide a link to the CTVs channel so that you can watch it if you wish to instead of looking at it as a PowerPoint or a PDF. Is there assistance available to interpret which businesses are considered essential services. So I again I go back to what I was talking about the shelter in place order that is listed on our website resources page if you click on that link it opens actually the document itself. You'll be able to see the central services that are specified within there. If that isn't something that you feel like there may be some question as whether or not it qualifies I recommend using the number that I referenced earlier, which is the county's call center of 831-454-4242. Right. What are personal guarantees. Personal guarantees are for owners of 20% or more will have to personally guarantee the loan it could be a limited guarantee, which means that it could just result in business assets with the UCC and perhaps just based on your credit without real estate, or other assets involved. There were a lot of questions for nonprofits and so the first one was pretty broad in terms of what defines a nonprofit. At this point we haven't had any parameters on anything beyond the 501C. So there hasn't been anything that says a certain subset of a C is eligible or ineligible. I would recommend all nonprofits at this time apply. Can you apply more than once for an SBA loan? You can absolutely apply for more than once for an SBA loan. What is the best way to contact the SBDC? The best way to contact the SBDC on the first slide we had our website, email and phone number. Again, these slides will make sure they make them available. The easiest way to contact us is our email address since we're not allowed to go into the office. That is SBDC at cabrio.edu. You can also go to our website, sandercruzsbdc.org, to fill out an application, apply now, and that will put you into our database and allow us to contact you remotely. This is Andy from the Economic Development Office. If you've got questions that you can't answer that are about what we talked about as far as shelter in place also, I offer you to go to our website and click on the contact us link. Or if you wish you can email us directly, which is OED at sandercruzcounty.org. Okay, is there any requirement for how long a business has been in business? There's no requirement. SBA has not been forthcoming with their underwriting on business startups. They're looking at this historically. So the longer you've been in business, the higher the likelihood that you're going to get the amount that you're looking for. But there's no been the requirements of how long you have to be in business to qualify. If a husband and wife who own a business 50-50 of an escort, do they both need to fill out the SBA for 13 forms? My understanding is yes. Does a non-profit need to fill out the 4506T form? Scott, are you on the air still? So my understanding is non-profits would need to fill that out for the business, but not for themselves. Does a 4506T work for an escort? Yes. Right. So what's the difference between a layoff or just reduced hours until it passes and we would gain business traction? So when I use the term layoff, I'm referring to a permanent separation of employment as opposed to a temporary furlough. Is a sole proprietor eligible for unemployment insurance? So on EDD's frequently asked questions site, they do discuss this exact topic here, and here's the guidance from EDD. If you are self-employed and unable to work or have had your hours reduced due to COVID-19, you may be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits under a few different scenarios. The first one is you choose to contribute to UI elective coverage and paid the required contributions to be considered potentially eligible for benefits. The second is your past employer made contributions on your behalf over the past five to 18 months. And finally, you may have been misclassified as an independent contractor instead of an employee. Has unemployment waived the one week waiting period? Yes, the governor. So there's what that's referring to is there is a typically a one week waiting period of receiving no wages before you can receive unemployment or file for unemployment. The governor has waived that request and you can file for unemployment immediately after separating or reducing your hours. So that's what the sales tax payments still do next week. We have to work on that one. All right. Let's see for an economic injury loan. Okay. Could business apply for a second disaster loan down the road if they needed it. My understanding is yes, go ahead Scott. The answer is yes. So if they if they apply for economic disaster loan they get approved and they use it. Before December 15 of this year, then they can apply for another one that applications and December 15 of this year. And then there's a question about does a nonprofit need to fill out a 45 was 60. And the answer is yes. And then does an escort and the answer is yes. I see a questionnaire about our website address. Again, it's www.scc vitality.org. Right. So, so there's a question on whether or not there'll be a property tax extension. I don't believe the county's made any determination about that at this point. Fair with us. We're trying to read through the old questions that are coming in. How long does it take to get a response for an SBA loan? How long does it take to get a response for an SBA loan? Yeah. What depends depends how much you're asking for if you're asking for less than $25,000 than it's pretty quick, like they're saying the same week, but if it's over $25,000. It could take two or three weeks. I just got off the phone with SBA. And so far there is 700,000 applications in the state of California alone. So I think the turnaround time might they're they're they're they're loading up on people right now. They're going to start going to a 24 hour call center where you can get a hold of them at any time. They also are stopping production on everything else that they do and only focusing on disaster loans. So that what I mean what I reason why I'm saying all that is the time frame for them to get in get get a hold of you and talk to you from applying. They say it's two or three weeks but I'm assuming it's probably going to be about a week or two because they know this is this is high priority. Will there be any relief for staff that does not qualify for UI for various reasons recent hires for instance. So the only guidance that we're receiving now is that UI that actually the employee could be eligible for UI through a previous employer through contributions made. There may be some relief if it's just a layoff. There's no additional relief at this time, but there there could be relief under the disability insurance. Is there any possibility that interest rates for the SB loans will go down further. There's a there is a there's a possibility probably but probably not anytime soon like I doubt it. There are some cities and counties throughout the state asking like the Congress individuals are like, you know, trying to write bills for that, but I doubt it. I'm not an SBA so I probably shouldn't talk on their behalf but as of right now the answer is no. If you apply for less than 25,000 I need to apply again how soon can you make the second request. After you spend all the money. So, like, okay, here's a here's a quick example. If you're operating cash every month is $10,000 and you apply for $30,000. Then that would be three months, you wouldn't be able to apply for another three months you'd have to wait until you're you use all your operating capital, but it would it can't be an ex over an amount like you can't ask for 30 spend it in a day and then ask for another 30 so how long can we expect the first unemployment insurance payment to take. So we don't have the exact timeframe that would be something that you would need to contact Ed with it. I don't even want to give a typical range because we're not in typical time right now. So I would defer that question to Ed. You mentioned the SPDC offers free advising does this include legal advice. No, we do not offer legal advice we do have a short list of lawyers that we've worked with in the past and heard good things and historically provided free consultation. But we definitely stay on the other side of not offering legal advice because we were not qualified to. I'm asking for six months estimated costs for a restaurant for instance does this include all products lease utilities and labor costs. Yeah, it includes everything, everything. People payroll everything. I'm a sole proprietor and 50 employees, because I'm not incorporated can apply for insurance that you're mentioning to self employed people. Yeah, I would go back to my my answer that I had about claiming insurance for self employed there are the three instances that Ed is providing. You could apply for unemployment insurance and that would be if you contributed to the elective coverage. You're you had a past employer that made contributions or you were misclassified as an independent contractor. It's the gentle ones for more general questions a lot of these are very specific and they'll sort of pass on those at this point. I think might be. That might be it so Andy you might close this out. Okay, I want to thank everybody for participating and listening in it's been. Very insightful and I think the information that we've shared has been kind of broad enough that it covers a large percentage of the businesses that are out there. We wish you all the best of success, and everybody stay safe in the process. And thank you again for joining us.