 You're tuned in to the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM Low Power Radio for Davis, California. I am Autumn Lab-A-Reno and today is Tuesday, May 5th. We are sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. 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 anytime at kdrt.org. My guests today are Davis Mayor Brett Lee and Jessica Hubbard, Executive Director of the Yolo Community Foundation. We'll get to our interviews in just a few minutes and this Friday, my guest will be Senator Bill Dodd. It's been an incredibly busy and strange past week. And protesters surged at the Capitol in Sacramento as they did elsewhere in the country trying to force the government to reopen. This week brought us an ill-fated juvenile bear on the loose, reports of a gun-toting man on the green belts of South Davis, and a construction error that took out internet service for much of the town for much of the day yesterday and it's only Tuesday. And the pandemic continues. And apparently there's something in life called a murder wasp and now we need to be afraid of that. There have been many changes to the statewide shelter and place order and that of course will trickle down to all of us in Yolo County. In a press conference yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that some retail stores across the state can reopen with modifications as early as this Friday, a partial list of stores that can reopen on a pickup-only basis includes bookstores, music stores, toy stores, florist, and sporting goods retailers. There are many types of businesses not included in this release and still others scheduled for a much later Stage 3 or Stage 4 reopening and Newsom's office said it would release more details later this week. The governor's plan also expands decision-making at the local level, allowing some communities to move ahead with the reopening process at their own pace. Counties must first submit containment plans that outline their ability to meet certain requirements for medical equipment, hospital beds, testing kits, and the ability to implement contact tracing. There's a lot more to this order. See covid19.ca.gov for more information. This is a reminder that Yolo County's shelter in place remains, order remains in place until May 31st and until further notice, generally that happens as a result of the state changing its order. Face coverings are recovered while conducting all types of business in Yolo County. New at Yolo County.org, click on the roadmap to recovery link. That is where, since April 24th and forward, they're storing all their current covid19 related information from public health. All right, there are two significant days of philanthropic giving this week. Thursday is giving Tuesday and that's scheduled at an unusual time. We'll hear more about that later. Thursday is our important annual regional big day of giving or big dog. The need across nonprofit sectors is intense right now and I think this week expresses that. I do want to take a moment to advocate and ask for support for this nonprofit in particular. I sit here every week highlighting a diversity of community voices is, it's what we do. Thank you to the show. Thanks to the combined work of Davis Media Access and KDRT. That's community media supporting volunteer fueled radio. Low power, big impact, especially in this time of physical distancing. Donations to Davis Media Access on the big day of giving directly support KDRT. And folks, I am one among many voices here. Check the schedule at KDRT.org or visit Davis Media Access on YouTube. And that's where the Yolo County Community Diary Project videos are starting to filter in. Over the last few weeks, we changed up everything we do to make new things and facilitate new ways of connecting and expressing ourselves. However you are able to support, I thank you. Let's take a break from music and we will get to our first interview in just a minute. He was first elected to the Davis City Council in 2012 and reelected in 2016 becoming mayor in July 2018. With us again today is Brett Lee. Welcome to you Brett. Hi Adam. Glad to be back. Yeah. How are you doing? Yeah. Okay. Good. We spoke very briefly back on April 10th and I'm pretty certain April had 49 days this year. But here we are again in early May. There is a council meeting tonight and I know it's focused on the budget. I'm pretty certain it's not going to be pretty because the COVID-19 impact just isn't. What can you tell us about tonight's meeting? Yeah. So we're kind of talking about a couple things, big, big, fairly important things. One is Measure J.R. Renewal. We have a couple months before we need to officially place that on the ballot. But we wanted to start discussions early. I think that's one thing that's important to do when possible to have a fairly long sort of runway on these types of things. And then the other thing which our fiscal year starts July and we need to talk about the budget. And as a lot of California cities and sort of counties are discovering there is going to be a lot less revenue coming in than was originally forecasted. So Davis isn't as sales tax reliant as some communities, but it is an important component of our budget. So we're going to get the latest update on what sort of shortfall we think we're going to see. And then importantly, there's an aspect of forecasting. So depending on who you talk to, some people talk about sort of a V recovery, sort of a dip down, hit the bottom and bounce right back up, kind of like the shape of a Z. Most people are not expecting it to be like that. Most people are expecting it to be a little bit more like a U, which dip down, you sort of bob along the bottom for a while and then you sort of pick back up. What is a little alarming is some people are talking about an L-shaped recovery, which is you basically hit the bottom and then you just sort of drift along the bottom for a while, sort of in the shape of an L. So tonight we'll get an update on the actual numbers to date in terms of the impacts we're seeing and then discuss some plausible scenarios and what magnitude of changes we'll have to make to the budget. Right. And it's not just, obviously you have to pay attention to the fiscal year that's coming up starting July 1st, but my understanding is not just going to impact cities and counties for the next year, we're looking at several years and we're looking at some pretty serious structural deficits. Potentially. We were already underpaying towards our maintenance of infrastructure, so roads, bike paths, things of that nature. So we were looking to close that revenue gap. People have various estimates, but if we think about that gap as being previously roughly about $8 million a year, that gives you a sense of the magnitude that we're talking about in terms of additional money we were looking to find from other sources. And by other sources, I mean we're a couple hotels are under construction and they're soon to open and those would have brought in about a million dollars, cannabis, depending on your view, better or for better or worse. We originally thought it would bring about $500,000 of revenue to the city. It looks like more like a million dollars. So that gives you a sense of the magnitude of the challenge, but also the magnitude of possible additional funding that we might have seen had the world remained relatively normal. But now with COVID-19 and all the businesses being shut down, depending on how long the recovery is, you're right, it could be a multi-year process to get back to where we were. And so that has implications for the city's budget. As of now, I think Davis is not facing as large a challenge as some of the other communities in our region, but having said that, there will be challenges and I also don't want to take away from the individuals where we have sort of this, I would say in our community it's perhaps a little more pronounced. We have some folks who, their jobs and everything have been fine. They work from home but get the same amount of pay, but we've had others who have seen their income go to zero, where they've lost their jobs or been furloughed, or we have small business owners who are now starting on the second month of absolutely no income coming in. And so we see sort of the challenges that our community face. It's a little uneven in terms of at the individual level. I would say at the city governance level, there's definitely going to be a shortfall and we'll have to adapt and tonight will be a good opportunity to think about how we make some changes and the magnitude of those changes in relation to the challenge we face. What we don't want to do is overreact, but at the same time, we need to get a little bit in front of it rather than you look in your pocket and there's no money to buy the essentials. So we've got to make sure that the essentials continue to function and we need to have police, fire, water needs to run, sewage needs to work, all the sort of basic things. We need to be able to repair dangerous situations with the roads and stuff like that. So we need to protect absolutely those fundamental services and then we have to figure out, okay, how do we do cost containment? Are we talking about overall across the board reductions in terms of departments? Are we, you know, do we look at specific areas to defer or, you know, various things? I think it will be a good discussion and the important thing is we're starting, I wouldn't say we're starting early, but we're not starting late. Yeah, over the last couple of years, you've been in a lot to appear on one show or another and we've talked a lot about economic development. You mentioned two things at the top of the interview. I want to make sure we circle back to one was formerly Measure J, now Measure R coming up for renewal. So let's talk about that, what that means. And then I also wanted to touch briefly on what's now being called the Aggie Research Campus because the EIR feasibility study came out for that last week. So first measure R, let's talk about what that means. Yeah, so for your listeners, Measure J, J slash R, J was original, R was the renewal of Measure J. So in summary, in a nutshell, if the city wants to grow outside of its existing borders, and when I say grow, grow in terms of some sort of development, it triggers a community-wide vote. So the community gets to vote on whether they want that or don't want that. And there has to be kind of specifics around the proposal. So the first one was Covel Village, which the community voted against. The next one was Wild Horse Ranch, which the community voted against. There was Nishi One, the community voted against, Nishi Two, the community voted for, and then just recently, West Davis Act of Adult, the community voted for. But this Measure J, our ability as community members to vote on peripheral growth will end December 31st unless it's renewed. And so the city council is talking about putting it up for renewal to add another 10 years to this ability of us to vote on things like that. Right, right. So this will be its second vote for renewal, and yeah, the last time it was approved was 10 years ago. And of course, that has direct bearing on our ability to vote for things like the Aggie Research Campus. And as I've read materials from the city, I mean, I know any time a development comes up, there's concern from open habitat groups and environmental protection groups and all of that. But I know that the ability to vote for projects like that will actually bring significant money into the city's coffers. Yes. Potentially. It's not only from the city's perspective in terms of money to the city in terms of taxes, you know, revenues like that. It's also potentially for local businesses, you know, more customers, things like that. Sure. And also, you know, there's the ability of companies that are expanding and need additional space, a place for them to locate to. The flip side is, you know, Davis is a nice place, and people understandably are concerned about peripheral growth, what that does to the quality of life for the people who are already here. Right. And I think it's a balancing act, and we've seen with, you know, a couple of the yes votes and a couple of the no votes, that people do understand that there's some nuance there, that it's not, you know, all growth is bad or all growth is good. And I think, unfortunately, maybe in the not too distant past, we kind of, it kind of split along those lines. And now I think it's more of a, well, let's see the details. Let's see whether this actually is an overall net benefit or a net negative for the community. So it's not on the ballot at this point. It still has lots of steps to go through before we figure out at the council level whether to put it on the ballot or not. There's several more commissions to go, that needs to go before. But at this point, it is not on the ballot for November. And they're still, I would describe it as fine tuning their proposal to provide more detail and make it a little more tangible. Okay. So, you know, it'll be an interesting discussion. Yeah, I look forward to hearing more about that. And because you mentioned commissions in our last couple of minutes, I want to talk about what it's taken to run the city during this time of COVID-19, like everyone else, you're working remotely, you're holding meetings remotely, and we know that, you know, that didn't get off to a great start, but it seems to have evened out with Zoom and a process there. Have city commissions been able to continue, you know, meetings, how is that all working? Yeah, I would say it's going well. I've been, I've had two full open space and habitat commission meetings. I'm the liaison to that commission, and that went well. I've been on a social services commission meeting as well. The commissioners have been able to participate fully. People have been able to call in or zoom in and provide public comment. Last night, we had an open space and habitat commission meeting scheduled. There was a quorum, but because of the Comcast outage, it was difficult for some people to participate. So the commission made the decision to postpone the meeting until there could be fuller participation. And so they're likely to reschedule last night's meeting to a future date. But I would say it's actually going pretty well. And I think what's nice about it is for people to make public comment, they can just call in or zoom in rather than in the old days, take a trip to some physical location to wait for the item to come up and then give you a two to three minute comment and then either sit and watch the meeting there or you know, then head on home. We may never go back. Yeah, I think there are some definite advantages to this way of public comment. I believe it makes it easier for people who are busy to be able to provide their input. Well, I want to thank you and the rest of the council for keeping keeping everything going during this time and for stopping by to provide us with a lot of information and some important updates. And I also want to direct people to city of Davis dot org, the city council link there, you can get all the information about calling in or zooming in to the meeting or watching it online. So thank you, Mayor Bradley for taken a few minutes to join us today. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you bottom for having me and also thank you for the community service that you guys are providing, especially during this sort of new, not so normal, normal. You bet. All right, great to talk to you with you. Thanks. Okay, bye. All right, we'll take just a minute for music as we get set up for our next call. Jessica Hubbard is the executive director of the Olo Community Foundation. We spoke some weeks ago when the foundation was involved with coalescing support for nonprofits during this extraordinary time. Welcome back, Jessica. Thank you so much for having me. So let's start with where we are, which is an unusual week with an unusually timed giving Tuesday that falls in the same week as the big day of giving. What's the deal there? So the deal there is that the big day of giving is a local event is for the Sacramento Metro region. It always falls on, I believe it's the first Thursday of May. So that's May seven, and has been in that that's been the case, you know, that's been planned for some time. Yeah, giving Tuesday is typically the Tuesday after Cyber Monday, which I believe is Tuesday after Thanksgiving, right? And it's an international event. So that's not specific to our area. And because of the tremendous need facing nonprofits right now, the international organization decided to add Giving Tuesday now, which just happened to be to take place the same week that our local big day of giving happens to happen as well. Yeah, a little bit of confusion out there. A little bit of confusion, but we can just make the sake of an end of giving. Right, right. The point is that nonprofits are in need. And this is these days are both opportunities to support the things that people care about. So when you and I spoke last time, it was right as the yellow COVID-19 relief initiative was kicking off. Tell us what's going on there. And I know you want to talk about the donor engagement work, the foundation's doing too. Absolutely. So there's three pillars. As you mentioned, the first is the yellow COVID-19 relief fund. We're in the midst of reviews reviewing proposals. That's for grants that we're making with money that came in from the county and the cities in Yellow County, as well as a few other donors. And those that's a rolling application basis. So if a local nonprofit is listening and is interested in applying, go to yellowcf.org and you can find the application and how to apply. We are also in the midst of a technical assistance program offering training to nonprofits on the issues that they're telling us are particularly pressing right now. So I think we've done four or five. We've got four or five on the schedule over the next couple of weeks and we'll continue to add as we hear from our nonprofits what will be useful. And then the third piece is exactly what we're talking about today, which is donor engagement work. So we know that, you know, the fund will be great. I really am excited about the support we'll be able to give local nonprofits. But this is really tremendous need that's going to be around for a while. And so this isn't something that just a few donors can solve. This is something that needs to engage our community at large. And so we're really working to help our local residents understand the needs created by COVID-19, understand the really inspiring things the nonprofits are doing to address those needs and then come together to each give what we're individually able because they'll add up to a lot. So I've heard comments from people as I talked to people in the community. I had no idea there were so many nonprofits in Yellow County or I had no idea you guys, Davis Media Access, do all the things that you do. And I think that's going to hold true for a lot of donors that they're going to be surprised at the depth of resources and talent here in our local nonprofit community. I think that's a silver lining to all of this. I think that we're really working to help the community see the tremendous work of our local nonprofits. There are 87 nonprofits participating from Yellow County participating in the Day of Giving. And of course, the majority of sort of nonprofits that fundraise and our community serving do participate in the Day of Giving, but not all do. So the answer is the number is bigger than 87. And they do tremendous work. So on our website, we have a section where any local nonprofit can share a brief summary of what they're doing in this crisis. And, you know, when I read through it, as trying as this time is, it makes me feel like we're going to get through it because they are amazing people doing amazing things for our community. Yeah, I'll say it was actually fun to fill out the survey too, because it helped, it helped center me in, OK, what is it we're doing at this time and how are we doing it differently? It didn't take a lot of time. So I'll encourage my fellow nonprofits to, you know, fill that out and check out the foundation website if you haven't done so. Thank you. Already. I am curious, you mentioned the tech assistance assistance. So what kinds of things, what kinds of issues are nonprofits identified that are challenging? So for sure, cash flow management is a challenge right now. Obviously, that's something every organization deals with all the time, but it's much harder when your revenue is plummeting. So we had a recent Megan likes is a local CPI who has a national training business did an amazing session for nonprofits about how they can address that. We have been a Sarah Carter, who's a local marketing consultant, talk about how to use the virtual tools at Artisposal to take services and fundraising and sort of stakeholder engagement online as well as operations of the organization. We had several people from the center for rights and also from the county talk about how nonprofit employers can support their employees and connect their employees to resources and make sure that they're making decisions with their employees benefits and needs in mind. And that's just a few. We've had several others as well as some coming up. Oh, we have one of fundraising in terms of crisis. All these are reported on our website too. Actually, the best way to do the recordings is YOLO nonprofits.org, which is a partnership between us, the Impact Foundry and the YOLO County Library System. We've got some coming up on how to think about events like you canceled, you postponed, you go virtual. We've got one on board engagement in times of crisis, one on strategic planning and crisis, so we're excited. As soon as we can stop having, you know, internet go down. Right, right, right. But that aside, we're really excited about the training. I know the partnership between the foundation and the library and the Impact Foundry is great. I've gotten a lot out of the webinars and the sessions I've attended, so thank you for that work. I feel like we should also give a shout out here to the YOLO County Board of Supervisors for, you know, for really beginning to identify this issue and kick off this this fund and working with with the foundation. So, absolutely. That's where this started. They came to us. Yeah. And they, so they were the ones who initiated this process and they sent you the $250,000 to the fund. So, right, there have been really critical and core to this process. Right, and the individual cities who are supporting and some of the local big businesses that I know you're hoping will will come on in and join this. So, all right, well thank you for your work. Thanks for coming back to update us too. I have a quick plug. You bet. Bigdayofgiving.org. So, it's very easy to give. There's 87 local nonprofits. You can give any time between now and Thursday night. So, just www.bigdayofgiving.org. Right. Thanks for that. All right, take care. Bye. Well, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the COVID-19 Community Report. I will be back on Friday with Senator Bill Dodd. And as I read out all that information from the state of California, I'm looking forward to getting his take on some of that. From the KDRT Studio, I'm Autumn Labirino, and this has been the COVID-19 Community Report.