 I think you just just hit join audio I think join what audio plus no that one makes you go to your something else and then and then hit the start video at the bottom left hand yeah oh there we go yeah okay thank you okay yeah come get me thank you all right we're gonna be getting started here with our virtual town hall and moment um if we could have everybody as you guys come on to the call or that your computer if you would please hit the mute button at the bottom of your screen lovely I'm sorry how do you get mute if you're on the phone um you won't if you're on the phone you won't have the mute option you'll just have to be quiet okay my ring doorbell may sound every once in a while though it just makes it hard for you know sit to hear if there's tons of noise going on in the background but I know you can you'll be fine okay I'll be quiet we're just gonna give it a few minutes here to let everybody kind of load on and come on and as you get the mute button on the bottom of your screen we'll be getting started here in a few minutes their presentation with this because I can't log into this zoom thing um we do have that there'll be a few slides as representative singer speaks but we will make those available we're gonna record this so they will be available once we're done here and will we be able to ask questions you will be able to ask questions towards the the end and I'll let you know when we open up the floor to questions if you're on the phone we we ask that you just give us some I guess some time to work through we've got a lot of questions coming in on different format platforms if you're on the computer and you'd like to ask a question once we get to that point if you hover over the bottom of your screen there's a chat option we're asking that this is how you will send in your questions to me is through your chat option and again if you're just coming on if you could please hit your mute button we would appreciate it okay folks you give it about another minute for folks to get logged on then we'll get started this is Jonathan Singer by the way on the phone okay it's about 1 o 2 p.m. we are recording this so for folks who miss part of this definitely once again this is state representative Jonathan Singer as a quick reminder for those of you who are logging on via computer if you want to mute yourself and also if for bandwidth purposes it's also helpful if you want to leave your video on that's fine we love to see what you're eating for lunch and maybe get some new ideas in this era of social distancing but if you want to turn off your video screen you're more than welcome to do that as well I want to thank everyone for being here especially our folks from the Chamber of Commerce for taking the time to put this together as well as the our regional director from the small business administration once again if you can all set things to mute if you haven't done that already I'm seeing more and more mute buttons go up so good work over there all right so Scott from the Longmont Chamber of Commerce I know that you're on a tight timeframe as well as our regional administrator former representative Dan Nordberg so I'm gonna let Scott jump into this right away unless unless any of our other presenters have anything else right now and otherwise Scott take it away all right thank you representative Singer appreciate your time and I'll be quick here and then I'll jump off but we do have several other Chamber staff on the call today so if anybody has questions about what's talked about today you can talk to the Chamber or Representative Singer's office so I know we have Jessica Carson and Jessica Wanasek with the Chamber office on the call today too but I want to thank everybody for joining us today I want to especially thank Representative Singer for his time his leadership and also his concern for the employees of our Longmont businesses I want to thank Hannah Light in his office and Jessica Wanasek in our office here at the Chamber for arranging this and putting this all together so thank you to those two ladies at the Longmont Chamber we understand that you as the employees are an integral part of our business community in fact people are the most important part of any business I want to let you know a little bit about what the Longmont Chamber of Commerce is doing the Longmont Chamber is part of the Advanced Longmont Partnership and we partner with the Longmont Economic Development Partnership the Downtown Development Authority Visit Longmont Workforce Boulder County the City of Longmont Small Business Development Center and we are meeting daily to strategize and plan a path forward and work with our state and our local officials to help businesses and all employees and we want to see our businesses being successful and we want to see you and what we've done together is we're doing a resource hub so if you check out Longmont.org forward slash COVID-19 I believe we'll have that website up on the screen at some point it's Longmont.org forward slash COVID-19 and that website you can see a lot of businesses and also for employees and what we've just recently started to add and this list will grow but we've just recently added is a list of hiring so if you are out of work right now and you are looking for some positions that would be a good fit for you these are challenging times for our community and I've had a number of conversations with business owners and employees who are concerned about their incomes their families and their future but we are going to get through this together and one of the ways we're going to do that is through leadership and so that's why I'm particularly pleased that Representative Singer has joined us today and so I would ask you that to listen to his responses to your questions and listen to what he has to say he's here to help you and answer your questions but also he's going to be listening to what you're saying and so the information that you text or chat and your questions he's going to take that back and he's going to work with his fellow legislators he's going to work with all the departments at the state level and our governor's office and and that way they're going to work together to do what's best for Coloradans and so please look at this as an entire conversation learned from him but also know that he's going to take the information back to better help you so thank you again for joining us today I hope you get a lot out of this we are planning to do probably more of these so stay tuned and also check out again amonglott.org forward slash coded hyphen 19 for more information thank you all right thank you Scott for that I'm going to jump straight to our regional director Dan Nordberg right now and thank you everyone once again for for keeping yourselves on mute if you're on the phone you'll have to use your mute button on the phone on well your cell phone unless you're dialing from a rotary phone in which case congratulations on keeping that all right Dan thank you again for joining us I know you're exceptionally busy I know there's a huge federal package that's already been passed and there's another one that's coming down the pipeline but please share with us what you have and let us know what else we can be doing great thank you representative singer and thanks for your leadership and facilitating this I'm glad to be here so I want to talk a little bit about is representative singer referenced we've heard about the congressional package going through at this time but do want to make you all aware of another congressional action that took place two weeks ago Congress passed what was the legislation was HR 6401 that is the coronavirus preparedness and response supplemental appropriation act and allow that legislative vehicle Congress authorized the small business administration to utilize our economic injury disaster loans for businesses who have been adversely impacted by coronavirus now for context this loan program is traditionally what we use for to help communities recover from wildfires disasters you know you name it tornadoes really natural events this is historic for us and that it's the first time SBA is responding to a biological event a pandemic so over the past two weeks we have been working with Dylan we've been working diligently with states all over the country including here in Colorado and I certainly want to commend if there's anybody from the Office of Economic Development on the line as well as our SBDC network partners for the work that they did in helping declare Colorado an SBA disaster because that allowed us the opportunity to bring in these economic injury loans and it was a very prescribed process and the team here in Colorado did a fantastic job so I'd be remiss if I did not say thank you to them now that these now that these economic injury loans are available what does that entail who are these eligible for though the economic injury disaster loan is up to two million dollars of assistance per small business as well as for private nonprofits they can be utilized to pay fixed debts payroll accounts payable and really any other bill that would have been paid if the disaster not had not impacted that business in terms of the interest rate for that product it's three point seven five percent for small businesses and it's two point seven five percent for nonprofits in terms of the repayment schedule it can go out to 30 years so the term is certainly I think friendly in that regard but also it's important to note for anyone thinking about this product or any organization may be listening that terms are determined on a case by case basis I will say that this product while we've had authorization for just two weeks to utilize it we are already having thousands of people apply through the web online application portal you can find that application site at SBA dot gov forward slash disaster SBA dot gov forward slash disaster I am gonna preface with two things that website is currently down for maintenance right now unfortunately we are dealing with just nationwide bandwidth issues and we need to get it addressed so we're just doing that right now it's being done as fast as possible I'm hopeful we'll be back on by tonight the other thing I want to make sure I preface is that the congressional action going through today we've all heard about this huge package that's going to be coming about it's very important to note that there are likely going to be changes to the economic injury disaster loan program that will be probably more favorable to the consumer once that language is passed so it's important to keep an eye on it certainly we're gonna be compute we're gonna be communicating that information as it becomes available to us and that's why these forms are so valuable so stay tuned I will also give another teaser that we have a flagship loan program that many small business owners utilize called the 7a loan program we fully expect that that is going to be altered in a relatively drastic manner to better help small businesses and consumers alike so stay tuned we'll probably have more information in the coming weeks but represent singer if time permits I'd be glad to answer any questions that individuals may have I'm taking them excuse me taking myself off of me right now so since since we do have mr. Norberg reformer representative Norberg here on are there I'll actually go to Jessica did we have any questions for for the SBA that were already previously sent to us yes sorry I was just hitting mute on well let me see what we did get a few questions but and these are for the SBA is that what we're looking for that is correct yes a lot of these are all just really generalized questions so Dan are you able to hang on until we get to the question section or regrettably I have about five to ten more minutes tops and I apologize I just have another webinar I'm doing so put a question in the chat yeah Laura I'm gonna go to your question in the chat right now I'm gonna repeat it for everyone who may not be able to see the chat great question by the way from Laura McDonald if you get a loan from a bank will it impact what is available to you from a federal program so if you get a loan from a bank can funds from a federal program be used to repay that bank loan if the federal program has better terms and rates okay Laura that's a great question and and this is something that's been brought up I don't want to get too technical but I referenced the economic injury disaster loan program I also referenced what's known as our 7a loan program which is really a working capital program that SBA administers there has been some question and I think we're waiting to see in terms of what Congress does whether or not people can utilize both programs or if they'll be a penalty for utilizing both programs that is an outstanding question that I don't know also under our existing standards if you already are utilizing an SBA loan product that can prohibit you from utilizing another SBA loan product or some of our emergency even our economic emergency loans so we're all anxiously awaiting to see what Congress does with that standard I can tell you right now just based on what we're hearing and based on what we're seeing they really are giving us a lot of authority and they're trying to relax those standards so that we can just do whatever we can to eliminate the red tape and just help businesses but I'd be happy to talk to you more offline about that Laura but we are still waiting further guidance any any any follow-up from Laura on that one or any other questions Jessica there was one that came in and it says given the severe impact of mandatory closures on small business tenants as the legislature contemplated a moratorium on evictions for commercial tendencies related to the pandemic without some protection in place small businesses in particular will be forced to close leading to more layoffs if some kind of protection are not in place so I'm gonna try and tackle that one and I'm gonna put that my in my parking lot as I'm doing my presentation but is federally speaking you know Dan have you heard or seen anything in the new relief package that would be putting any kind of moratorium on mortgages rents for closures anything like that yeah great question no I have not at the federal level heard of any language that would do that you know I think a lot of what we're trying to do or from what I've seen from at least the small business standpoint of this legislation is making sure that we have the working capital available to small businesses who need it during this difficult time I will say I'm hearing components of the loan programs and various things to do just that that would forgive parts of the loan if it's used for payroll and those things to keep employees on staff so I know that doesn't really pertain to the tenant question and some of the least questions the moratorium that was referenced but you know this package from a federal standpoint they're certainly trying to do everything they can to make sure business owners have the capital they need as well as the flexibility to survive during this uncertainty all right any other questions for Mr. Norberg before we move on with our presentation and like I said I will get back to that during during my component but I don't want to preempt other folks if not all right Dan if you want to stick on for a couple minutes you're more than welcome to looking at the zoom chat just to make sure there's no other questions I'm seeing here I'll give one more half beat of a second for people to take themselves off of me if there's a question for a federal small business administration hey I do have one question um is in that uh economic injury and that that disaster loan does it allow them to pay their contract employees as well small businesses to pay their cut yeah I mean so you can utilize that loan so if the contractor employees are for payroll as part of your normal payroll and you would have made that um you would have been able to make that payment had it not the coronavirus occurred I think that would be allowable use of that fund I will say too that our underwriting standards are changing frequently on the economic injury program so they're giving they're trying whatever we can do internally from a regulatory standpoint as well as what congress is going to authorize us to do we'll certainly have a better picture in the coming days to me yes that would be an eligible use of that program okay thank you so just one other follow-up just to the to the question since it's hot off the presses um I know some other folks are watching online right now um and are texting me there is a federal bill called the rental eviction moratorium act this would prevent prediction uh excuse me for prohibit evictions during this pandemic and congressman goose supports it and has called for its passage we'll try and put links up on the facebook event as well as um if folks got this email from from me already I'll try and give new updates in the next 24 hours to your questions that either we didn't have full answers for or getting you answers for but with that Dan I'm gonna let you take off and and head to your next thing thank you I know you're incredibly busy across the region not just across Colorado and we really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today no thank you thank you representative singer and if there are questions that come up throughout the the conversation please don't hesitate to email them to me and we'll get people response all right um so what we're going to do now is we're going to move uh next to our state department of labor um I know the intention here was not only to talk about small businesses but really um I want to thank the chamber of commerce and their membership for really wanting to make this about employees and what services employees can get um from our state and federal government as well as their locals and so I know we have Patrick Teagarden here with uh a number of other folks and so I'm hoping that folks have have made it on I believe we have um Daniel Chase and um uh executive uh and maybe somebody else I apologize that's going to be my technical difficulty for today so if our friends from Department of Labor want to take themselves off of mute and and share what they have feel free to jump in thank you representative singer I hope you can all hear me uh this is Daniel Chase uh Chief of Staff to our Executive Director Joe Barela Pat had to step onto a different phone call we're kind of stretched then on phone calls right now but I'm sitting here with Angela Fanon-Steel who's our Director of Policy in our Unemployment Insurance Division to answer any questions there but just to give a brief overview on what we're up to as you guys have probably seen in the media we're pretty heavily focused on ramping up our Unemployment Insurance Division to handle the mass influx of claims that we've gotten we're seeing about a 1500 increase from before the work from home measures were implemented at the governor and at the local levels at this point we are accepting claims online through coloradoui.gov we were having some pretty significant technical difficulties with that website up until this week I won't say it's all fixed but we are at a point where we're accepting a ton more claims now and that website should be pretty functional at this point in terms of employer services we are continuing to push out our unemployment insurance division's work share program it's a program that partners with the business so that instead of having to lay off a portion or all of your workforce you can set up an essentially an agreement with our unemployment insurance division that would do it so that instead of laying off that workforce you would reduce their hours at work and then the work the the employer would pay for those hours that they're working and then our unemployment insurance division would pick up the remaining hours with unemployment insurance so that then the advantage there is you don't have to lose your retained workforce you can retain those ones that are knowledgeable and that are that are ones that are experiencing their jobs so we're pushing that information for employers you can always call 303-318-9100 that's our employer line and then employees we always encourage them to call our 303-318-9000 number for unemployment insurance the other side of things that we've been working on are our wage and hour division or our division of labor standards and statistics worked on promulgating emergency rules to compel employers that are in certain industries that are at higher risk of transmitting the virus to provide four days of paid sick leave to their employees if they're showing symptoms that's to encourage those employees to make sure there aren't barriers to them staying at home we want to make sure our not spreading that virus is our top priority and taking away barriers is is what we're focused on so those are our two main efforts right now we also just yesterday promulgated some emergency rules in our workers comp division to reduce the need for paperwork and in-person interaction with our division as you're going through that process so i'll just leave it there and open it up to questions if that's good for your representative singer that's great um jessica i'm gonna hop to you again do we have questions that um that have been pre-submitted that we can ask to our state department of labor yep let me just double check here we've got a list going um there's one how are you addressing the impact the businesses like mine who have already had to lay off 30% or more of their workforce uh through the through the department of labor unfortunately in terms of impact of businesses we don't have many options through us we're we're um partnering with our office of economic development and international trade and the small business administration that you heard from earlier to work with those businesses to try to try to figure out things like work share that may be able to help reduce their costs a little bit more but not do full layoffs okay and then um here's another one it says if a full-time employee has lost their job and had to get a temporary job are there are they now ineligible to receive benefits so my initial reaction is that if they received a reduction in hours they would likely qualify for benefits but i'm going to turn that over to angela who can answer that more in depth hi the requirements for receiving unemployment insurance is that a worker has to be working fewer than 32 hours each week or in any given week because benefits are calculated on a weekly basis and then they'd also have to be earning less than the weekly benefit amount for unemployment that works out to be about 55 percent of their average weekly wage and so it would it would depend on how many hours they were working on that temporary basis but it wouldn't completely take away their eligibility unless they were working so the full time which in colorado is considered more than 32 hours or 32 hours or more to be specific okay thank you and then um this well it looks like the last one here in this area how do self-employed people that do not fall under unemployment insurance get immediate money to cover personal expenses so in terms of that people like 1099 gig workers anyone like that first off do not just under federal law qualify for unemployment benefits unfortunately that's how unemployment was set up a long long time ago we are recommending a few things number one keep an eye on the federal legislation what's locally now called phase three that's going through the senate that will have money that will go to individuals whether or not they're a gig worker or not the other options that we've been saying we want to make sure those people are going to their local workforce centers as well unfortunately in terms of government benefits from the department of labor there aren't many options but they may qualify for other job opportunities they also may want to look at the department of human services for food assistance and then of course healthcare policy and financing for medicaid to get on that unfortunately in terms of unemployment insurance though those folks do not qualify at this time all right jessica any i'm assuming by your mute button that we don't have any other questions from you um anything else um from uh from the larger audience you guys have been doing a great job of putting yourselves on mute can you hear me i have a question go for it okay obviously there's a lot of money that's going to go through unemployment that we weren't anticipating can you predict what the long-term increased costs will be for businesses say a year from now when we have to kind of refund the unemployment money right and and just to give a little background back during the recession you're right we did have to borrow money that had interest to pay for unemployment insurance benefits we had to pay for that interest by doing a temporary surcharge on business so just to give a little background there at this point we are predicting that our unemployment insurance trust fund will be solvent without any borrowing into the first quarter of 2021 we do not have an exact forecast because really the next two months are going to decide that for us we don't know you know are these COVID layoffs temporary are they more permanent once we figure that out then we'll be able to see the long-term impact to the trust fund our immediate backup right now is interest free federal loans because they're interest free they likely wouldn't incur an additional surcharge onto employers and then you know after that if we have to consider bonding that would be another question but we we don't know at this point and the the solvency surcharge that employers may face we don't anticipate to kick on for a little while longer at this point all right any other questions for anybody oh yeah jonathan one just came in um this one it's kind of long it says we have furloughed 18 employees in longmont many of whom are PPE trained what are you hearing about what measures will be taken if our medical facilities become overwhelmed also what is longmont's community's most urgent needs um at this time i can't speak to longmont specifically in terms of urgent needs but i'll address the first question then the second in terms of medical personnel that we may need the emergency operation center is currently coordinating volunteers and other things like that to be registered and listed with us so that we can begin calling on those folks as as medical centers become overwhelmed we've encouraged people to reach out to the car out department of public health and the environment as well as the emergency operation center volunteer coordination um to begin getting ourselves on those lists so that we can start pulling people from that in terms of longmont's needs i can only speak to the state right now you know we see a lot of hiring and things like logistics transportation retail things like that that are urgent need now um and then of course medical personnel is on that list great thank you did we lose jonathan are you still with us i'm still here uh just move i you now know what the interior of my bedroom looks like but my son needed a nap so um so before we do any more questions um daniel angela can you stick on for the rest of this and we can let the remainder of our presenters talk and then we'll we'll go to just to free for all with questions yep we'll be on for the whole thing okay great um then what what we'll do is um i wanted to it looks like um jeff um jeff kahoon who's a friend of ours in the labor well in the labor world is here to talk a little bit about what's just going on for employees and employees rights and so i wanted to give them a couple of minutes to talk a little bit about what is going on in that world so jeff if you're on and wanted to just share with us what's happening in the employee world from the perspective of employees please jump on thanks jonathan i'm happy to can you hear me yeah but you do look like you're being held in an undisclosed location right now yeah i know the lighting's a little hard um but let me talk to the point um our big concern um from labor's point of view and i'm speaking as president of the local labor council afl cio uh we've been an active consultation obviously since this thing basically broke and um governor polis has taken very good steps very rational steps um to protect workers uh we are concerned that the frontline workers we represent uh are protected um are provided with protected gear um keeping in mind that union members deliver your mail union members service the airport union members are working very hard at safeway and king's supers um to keep supplies coming to us um so union members are on the front line of this all over the place including utility workers of course uh our big concern is that we maintain workforce levels where necessary particularly with critical services um and that we are working towards i think we are in pretty good stead there um we do want to make sure that um we have a voice on the governor's emergency panel uh headed by former mayor federico penia um to make sure frontline employees um as i said have a voice and decisions as they're being made so that's really where we're at so far so good we are taking good actions in our state um i think when we hear um governor polis speak we hear a rational approach to this unlike some other voices at the national level um so that's where we're standing right now um as we ask people to be respectful follow proper um distancing process when we're dealing with employees um who are doing work in this environment um a lot of people are at risk and hopefully the fewest possible number will be affected directly by the coronavirus so that's kind of where we stand all right thank thank you jeff for sharing that and if i ever need to do a cbs expose on anything and i need a room to shoot at my informant and i now know where to go there you go so before we before we go to more questions um what i'm going to do is is i'm going to hold off until everyone else is presented and then i'm going to really make sure that we do leave a lot of time open for questions so um so with that being said i'm actually going to jump into my brief presentation and then we are recording this and so if there's anything that you miss in the slides we will do our best to um well we will do our best to re-air this um with those slides so if you miss links or anything like that we'll we'll make sure that that is there so so once again i just wanted to thank everybody for for taking the time today i wanted to thank the chamber once again and um wanted to talk a little bit you've already heard a little bit about the federal response and so i'm going to move beyond where the federal responses since we have heard from well uh our uh state um small or excuse me our small business administration um one of the things that i will mention because it did it did come up um i have spoken with congressman nagus as well as congressman pro mutter they are working on a relief package um i shouldn't say relief package but relief four are gig economy workers and i do really want to say this really highlights uh a huge component of what um what our economy has turned into and there's probably some major structural changes that will need to take place as we uh as we move into the 21st century and see more and more contract employees be a larger and larger part of our economy um our current ui system was never unemployment insurance system was not built for this and so we need to create um new protections and new safety net um because the the trickle up and trickle down effects are potentially catastrophic otherwise but our federal partners are working exceptionally hard at that right now um the other thing um and i won't once again won't go into this a whole lot because our sba folks already talked about this um but i am going to move on to talk to you a little bit about the bigger you do at the state of colorado so um one of the big challenges we have in the state of colorado right now we are currently in a recess that means that um the leg your legislature while they are working hard are not at the capital to keep up with the social distancing and stay at home requirements that um have now been put in place uh that doesn't mean uh that uh legislation has completely stopped but it does mean hearings and votes have stopped for the time being there was an interrogatory filed with the state supreme court because technically we are limited to 120 days every year the question is whether those 120 days are consecutive or not we hope to be hearing back from the state supreme court um in the next week or two to see whether or not that is um those are consecutive days and whether right now we are literally just burning days and and are going to have to move quickly and and expeditiously when we do come back after it is safe or whether or not we can take the time so we can make sure that we are preserving everyone's safety well at the same time making sure that our democracy remains strong uh the other thing that i'll let you know that's going on at the state level right now people can email me they can call me um my uh i will make sure my cell phone number if you haven't seen it in the email already um is 303-875-4727 i'll say it one more time 303-875-4727 you can text you can call my office staff is working remotely um almost around the clock right now and so my thanks to them you can also email me rep singer rep like representative singer like the music uh at um gmail.com that will go to my state legislative account and we will get you in touch with either the state local or federal agency that needs assistance or if you're working on a policy front we will do that i did want to respond to the question uh about uh moratorium on evictions and um foreclosures the uh state attorney general phil wiser has asked the courts to put a halt on those cases uh for the time being um that is uh you know not anything that is guaranteed and so we are currently looking legislatively to see what we can do within the state government um that we're looking at where the state and federal government overlap on that to make sure that we're doing things legally and we have laws that that will actually protect people um as someone who is a renter i definitely understand the fear and the concern that a lot of people have right now and um and this this is affecting um not just people on the ground but this is affecting your lawmakers as well um the other thing that i'll mention is the state budget uh we are required to balance our budget every year what that means is that uh in in an era where um we were looking at a potential uh tax refund or tabery refund of almost um 300 um yeah we were looking at about 300 million dollar tax refund right now the the state coffers have probably shrunk um by about a billion dollars so we are looking at about hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to services potentially unless federal aid comes down quickly so um no new programs will likely take effect without federal assistance at this point uh we are and we were really prevailing on our congressional delegation to help carry us in this really challenging time uh the state cannot print its own money and we do have to maintain a balanced budget by constitutional amendment so we are using our bully pulpit as loudly as possible and once again looking at every legal angle to make sure that we can protect people who are either in foreclosure um rent um and uh the last thing that i'll mention on that side of things is i am having individual conversations with banks and i can say that many many of our banks have agreed to um either do forbearances or um even up to 90 days of of um um loan forgiveness um those are individual and not uh not done on more than a case by case basis in many cases but if you do reach out to me i already got one question in in the comments here um if you do reach out to me i can get you in touch with those banks and oftentimes they are willing to work with you on those things uh as well if you are struggling right now um i want to share with you a few things um the our center has been remarkably helpful um we also i have a link up here for the jeff co-action center as well as uh local food banks the food bank of the rockies um has i have a link up there and a hotline number up there as well and then if you need to reach out to um actually i'm going to mention this right now if you are grocery shopping for yourself right now and you see a little wick sticker women infants and children wick programs are specifically for women infants and children women who do qualify for wick um aren't able to use their wick dollars for things other than what um has been listed on the grocery shelves for them so this is peanut butter eggs milk uh different things like that so for those of you who are panicked please don't hoard um i want you to think about those folks for a second and think about the fact that they um if they don't uh purchase wick food they may not be purchasing food at all for themselves or for their kids right now take get what you need buy what you need but please don't don't go beyond that um please also don't hesitate to keep up on twitter and on facebook of the department of labor the office of emergency management department of public health all have very frequently updated social media channels that you can follow things may be changing sometimes by the minute um also if you are a veteran i have a link there at the bottom of this slide that talks about your ability to access VA resources so please um once again don't forget to reach out um if you need assistance and live in boulder county you can call the boulder county uh number 3034411000 um you can also go onto the boulder county website for food assistance workforce development centers if you're out of work um are operating remotely now so if you need assistance with that um they are out there um and they are not just helping people on public assistance like food stamps and tanaf but um anyone who's in need of a job uh you know the good news is we are seeing grocery stores hiring more and more people right now last i would just wanted to share some some links here on some of the local opportunities you have the colorado small business development center downtown longmont uh visit longmont and the longmont chamber all have resources up there on their websites so please don't hesitate to google them or or use the links as i've listed below uh but uh and last last but not least um what i will share is that for those of you who are just feeling personally overwhelmed right now that is completely understandable i think all of us are feeling some level of that right now um i'm going to be doing another town hall sunday afternoon i'll be posting a link to that as well um it'll be sunday from three to four thirty and we're specifically going to be focused on mental health um we can take care of our kids if we can't take care of ourselves folks so um so i will have some leading experts there to walk you through some things about resources but for anyone who needs to talk we want to make sure you have the resources out there um so i'm going to take a look and um or jessica you've been probably looking at some questions have i forgotten any of our presenters i don't think so wow okay first thing i haven't forgotten all day um jessica how are we looking on questions here so actually um if everybody is okay we would like to open things up with the the q and a portion now um we have a lot of questions coming in and i'm actually grouped a couple of them um they have to do with in regards to tenants and um renting issues so i guess maybe let's tackle those first there was one in the comments um it said i am a commercial property owner and my tenants are asking for rent relief and i'm not sure how i can assist them when the banking institutions have not provided any borrow or relief tackle that one i'm gonna take i'm gonna take a stab at it and then if other folks want to jump in feel free to feel free to do that um so i won't repeat anything but just looking at what our our attorney general has already done in terms of asking our courts for for a stay on those court cases that's that's the beginning um we'll have to look and see what we're doing through our federal relief package as well because uh there um ideally will be some strings attached so if you as a landlord are getting relief or forbearance uh it should be extended to tenants as well um i'll just say um since the question has come up uh more than once one of the legal challenges that we may be facing with with just a straight up rent relief program where we could say to people skip out on your rent for lack of a better term um the if we were to solely simply legalize that we'd probably be looking at other court cases around a takings issue and so when i say we're looking at every legal option to protect people we want to make sure that people are made whole because a lot of our landlords who are out there are they themselves small businesses and struggling a lot of conversations are happening though between tenants and landlords right now and what i would recommend is that until we can get back to the capital where we can actually create some blanket rules around this um please don't hesitate to reach out we will find ways to make this work on a on a case by case basis and like i said a lot of banks have been very forgiving um i and trying to find out ways to do this and and ultimately i'll just say from from a policy standpoint yes you know for the next 30 to 90 days we should be looking at some moratorium on both mortgages and and um rentals given the fact that the the economy is not um is not up and running the way it should uh would be um under normal circumstances i don't know if anyone else has any other thoughts though and representative this is daniel with the department of labor we're also recommending that landlords and tenants both keep open lines of communication with the department of local affairs uh division of housing they are working on trying to figure out what we can do administratively around rent relief um and of the such so uh we definitely recommend you guys reaching out to them as well okay so um moving on i have another question um this was in the comments as well it says i'm overwhelmed with information i would like i would like reassurance for my significant other that landscaping is okay to continue to do as long as all safety measures are being taken this is a good question and um i know um if you live in bolder county um or actually close to two and a half million folks now across the front range there have been different stay-at-home orders i don't know if landscaping is being considered an essential service right now and so this is something um i'm happy to take this one offline and and get you a better answer on that um given that in all likelihood there are some social distancing components to landscaping that's not um as long as you've got workers who are not in close proximity to each other and we're protecting basic health i think there's an opportunity there to talk to our local public health department um and we'll we'll make sure to bring them on in future conferences great thank you um another one it pertains to medicaid um is medicaid protected by statutes if bh mco's abandon ship through bankruptcy will hc pf be prepared to work with bh provider who doesn't love alphabet soup um so i'm gonna i'm gonna actually say what those acronyms are and then we can go straight straight into what that is and so um so um if if medicaid is not able so hc pf is a health care policy to finance hip-hop is um is our um medicaid department in colorado so um if our managed court care organizations or mco's um are in behavioral health abandon ship through bankruptcy will health care policy and finance be able to respond i would say the short answer is that um i'm working with the office of behavioral health um as well as our department our medicaid department to look at those different um components right now the answer is if everyone went belly up today the short answer would be no um but that's something that we'll be covering in our next um town hall meeting that's coming up uh on sunday great thank you um and the last one here in the chat is i'm in construction and we are starting to see impacts in some jur- jurisdictions delaying building permits inspections and planning review is there a thought to getting those departments more flexibility into being able to continue doing their jobs to not create new construction slowdown all right i was waiting for someone else to take that one but i'm going to try and juggle that one as best as possible so so building permits are conducted through local governments um so that would be and this is honestly very helpful we'll make sure to have our city and county local government officials on uh the next time we do a conference uh but the the short answer is these would be decisions made by your local jurisdiction um we are a local control state and this is a really good question um i know our planning departments are oftentimes right now working remotely which obviously creates some some slowdown there um what i would also say is is building permits are subject to public review and so we have been able to make sure that city councils can meet remotely our school boards can meet remotely we just passed legislation for school boards actually about a week before we recessed and um so when it comes to those public components we want to make sure that's still part of our process um if it has an immediate life health or safety component to it um so if you are building building or renovating a hospital wing or something for a medical clinic i think we do need to look at exceptions for that um and i can speak very boldly because i'm not a local government official right now so i can't um i can't say yes and i also can't say no to these things but what i can do um and i see that's from andy um andy if you want to email me at rescinger at gmail.com um and there's if there's a specific or a set of jurisdictions what i can do is i can get you in touch with those planning departments and also i work with the um construction trades and so we can find a way to see whether or not there's a good template that we can be following so we're not recreating the wheel every time great thank you um another one for you uh it looks like for uh cdle for ui denials for independent contract status what is the plan to answer that they are not misclassified how is that determined yeah that's a really good question so if you feel that um you are not an independent contractor and you are an employee then we do encourage you to file a claim um our division has a whole audits team uh that's dedicated to figuring out if an employee is an independent contractor or not and they will reclassify you um and then find an employer if they believe that that is the case so we encourage you to file the claim and if you feel that you have been misclassified that's something that we can handle um on our side that is something that we do quite a bit in fact thank you um see any specific resources for the small business immigrant community you recommend absolutely so um i'm gonna i'm gonna throw a little bit out there and if department of labor wants to throw something in there as well they can and so i will say that i just spoke with our our staff just spoke with the latino chamber of commerce here in longmont we are working on first of all getting translation services set up for our next town hall meeting the second thing is that we are looking into the legality of people who have their deferred action status their DACA status to be able to get access to basic services um and legislatively we were trying to actually create new pathways and new solutions even before the covid crisis um came up on top of us and so um i'm going to be looking through the federal relief packages and see if there's there's additional resources out there um as as we know um in our you know whether it's our construction industry our restaurant industry you name it um our our population of folks whether they are documented undocumented um have their green cards or not um they are a huge backbone of our economy and and i'm working to find ways to to address that daniel i don't know if you have anything specific at the department of labor as it relates to to uh deferred action so in terms of uh DACA we have determined that DACA recipients um are eligible for ui so that's a big win for us we are so we have on our staff kit tainter she's the uh senior advisor for new american integration uh in the governor's office she's been working on compiling those kind of resource documents um she's been pretty focused toward workers though i know she is moving to small businesses to figure out where those resources are i'd love to get that question if you can get it through representative singer to us i'd love to connect you with her i think she'd be a good resource the other resource that i'll just throw out there um not to put more on on our community nonprofits but if you uh reach out to el comite el comite de longmont um they have been very helpful in a number of circumstances right now i'm also working with the colorative immigrant rights coalition on a package of issues to see if they need to be addressed administratively or legislatively so this is really relevant question especially here in longmont and and something that will will get you a better answer to right thank you so here is a question that came through um an email it says for employees that are working for essence for an essential company do we need a form for transportation such as a letter from our employer how is the county going to know who is traveling for essential reasons and who isn't another good question and this is this is developing as time moves on um denver has put into place a number of restrictions that are um you know very strong so people are potentially facing you know 999 dollar fines if if they're violating the stay-at-home order um what i have seen and and i'll get further clarification on this and in my conversations with local law enforcement is really this is in the first real round is to be informative to people who encourage them to stay at home um but if they are you know going to an essential service or taking part in an essential service um that is something that is still necessary and still needs to happen so um you know what i what i would recommend right now if you know if you are a hospital staff if you're an employee of a grocery store um you know what i would suggest is you know not hesitating to have your employee ID with you um my guess is really this is going to be unless we see droves of people coming out and violating um the stay-at-home orders right now you're probably not going to be seeing those strong actions taking place where where people will be potentially looking at fines or other corrective actions um but once again i'll work to get you better answers on that as well great thank you we have a whole list of questions is there anybody else jessica sorry to interrupt um we have someone on the line from rtd so um col if you want to talk a little bit about what's happening our rtd world right now to use a technical term and and to provide some information background information feel free to jump in hey thank you for taking my call i'm just giving you a quick update on rtd you know our drivers were all still out there and uh you know work during to our best serve the public rtd was a little behind the curve in um you know trying to protect their drivers but uh i think uh with the governor's urging um they're starting to see the light um so we we've been driving scared because we contact a you know hundreds of people on a daily basis um i don't know if you're aware of that last night rtd passed an emergency schedule change where about 40 percent of services will be reduced mostly in uh service intervals like from 15 minutes to 30 minutes which is you know pretty acceptable based on on our current load however there were some routes that were completely eliminated and uh there were some some of the routes you know they just took the big acts you know the the simple acts was just changing us to a saturday type schedule and they are adjusting some routes to where they will start earlier than they would on a normal saturday on the core trunk routes and but some routes starting late and that could have some impact on the ability of our of our labor force to get to work in those early hour mornings or to finish up at the late hour evenings i mean late evening hour and uh rtd has uh on the upside rtd being as shortheaded as they were has committed to keeping all the employees on a monstaff the contractors um were not in as bad a shape as uh the district itself and uh it's still undecided this just started all last night so it's still undecided that's the best way to proceed on that um but do you have any questions about rtd any rtd questions i are they still collecting go ahead are they still collecting fares at the fare box have they uh roped off the driver's area um to help protect uh drivers well that was um in other places they are doing that's where they are doing backdoor entry only and um roping off a you know seats next to the driver in long mod this is a particularly bad issue because on the smaller tight buses the passengers sit very close rtd has a a little bit of a prop i mean a little bit they say yes we're going to rope them off no we're not going to rope them off but in other places um they've also done away with the fare collection uh just as a safety you know safety measure because the fare box is you know at the side of the driver but rtd has not taken those steps yet that other places in the country have thank you um i had a question on accessoride um have they drastically reduced their routes as well um accessoride is not it's not a fixed route service um they have not reduced that so there's no route to be reduced however they are experiencing with you know with the lockdown they have been experiencing a greatly reduced number of calls and that could have the impact later okay thank you anything else on rtd before we jump back to jessica with questions all right jessica anything else yeah i have a couple more um one let's see this came through it it says how long do we have how long do we have to attempt to hold on before we see any aid from my for my snap is did you hear that why don't we try and repeat that i heard some background noise on that okay so it says how long do we have to attempt to hold on before we will see any aid for my snap business so i'm assuming by snap business we're talking about supplemental nutritional assistance program is that correct or is this something different i believe so i think that's what they're saying yeah okay um what i will do is i i will work to i i wish i could just tell you it's coming tomorrow i know that they're moving with all due haste and are intending to get these you know assistance checks out very quickly once again people can can email me refsinger at gmail.com i wish i had all the answers today and but part of the reason we're doing this is to get the get the questions out there so we can make sure we can answer these questions as as as effectively and accurately as possible right and then one more came through text what are we going to do to help the tourism and travel industry here all right oh and i see it was a small business not snap so on that last question so um so for for the small business question i would certainly recommend um what we uh those were that relief package assuming it's past um it should all indications are that it will happen later tonight is the idea is to be getting checks out there as quickly as possible i'm hearing and this is rumor which i know is dangerous in a pandemic um with within about a week um i'm an optimist as well which is maybe also dangerous in a pandemic so um so in terms of what we're doing for our tourist industry and i i think what what i will say um actually can we get department of labor to chime in a little bit on what we're doing for seasonal employees before i go into what i was going to talk about yeah um we seasonal employees as you guys know generally will qualify for unemployment benefits um those employers are paying into the unemployment trust fund for their wages so that's that's number one um we're trying to get more workforce center assistance to those folks but with um the mountain communities being um relatively more heavier hit than the metro area with the covid virus it's it's been a little bit more difficult but that's definitely one of our central focuses right now on uh for our employment and training workforce development folks all right um so um the other thing is i am talking to the office of international develop our economic development international trade i'm um i actually hope to hearing from them by the end of the week on that so in terms of what that means excuse me businesses is um you know still up in the air for me but i'll work to get you a better answer on that one um also um please don't hesitate to reach out to the small business administration once again um they are out there as a resource for folks right now and um there there are loans that are being made available right now and they're even talking about um having some loan forgiveness through that program and essentially um low interest rates and and very favorable rates um over a 30 year payback as we heard earlier in the conference um in the conference call but once again if we if there are specific um issues with your specific business please don't hesitate to reach out rep singer at gmail great thank you okay we're getting down um here's one and i hope i have this right um are there plans for assisting those who work in the gig economy they are not eligible for unemployment insurance or able to handle the massive paperwork of an sba loan so if you are all right well i gave out my cell phone number and that obviously works so i'm going to not look at my cell phone while i answer this question but um so once again for for gig economy for independent contractors um we are asking the federal government for assistance with that right now um our current unemployment insurance program was not set up for gig economy workers they do not pay into that um and so that has been a huge challenge right now um that being said with the federal relief packages by understanding is that part of that will include um assistance for contract workers folks in our our gig economy um and this is you know once again another unfortunate but important opportunity to talk about what we can do in the future to make sure that folks in in our contract employee world um are better planned for and taken care of in the future because this is this is really highlighted the importance of that um if there's an immediate need please once again don't hesitate to reach out we will try and find a way either through food assistance rent assistance um whatever it is um to find a way to um support folks in the short term while we are um trying to create a better long-term um relief uh system yeah and to add on to that just real briefly um I wanted to also bring up that keep in mind workforce centers are ready to work with anyone they don't need to be employees or not um they can be an independent contractor and they can work with them we're also trying to um apply with the u.s. department of labor for some emergency grants that they're putting out for states um to hopefully get money in for retraining and and those kinds of things for gig workers as well great thank you okay it looks like we have two more uh one from an email it says what is the most pressing need at the state level right now and how can we ask concerned coloradoan's help excellent question um and daniel i'll let you jump in too if you've got some things I would say really right now uh the number one thing that we're going to have to figure out is how we're going to navigate a potential billion dollars in cuts um and these are going to be very tough choices that we're going to have to make uh we are using our bully pulpit to the federal government to say this is you know if you thought the 2013 flood was bad um this is worse this is going to be harder um but we are literally almost literally all in the same boat at this time so what I would suggest is really finding a way that we can all work together um to amplify that voice up to our federal partners to say we do need relief dollars we need them to come in quickly and we need to be able to make sure that the state can fine tune those relief dollars to the needs within our specific communities not just our specific state but within our specific communities um I've I've seen money coming down through community development block grant or proposals for money coming down through community development block grants but um the number one thing that we're going to have to figure out as a legislator is when we can come back when it's safe come back how we're able to meet if we're able to meet and how we're able to meet remotely if we cannot physically be back there and um and ultimately um you know what you can do to help uh I will um share share a number of links with folks but um if if you can go to the covid19.colorado.gov page I'm showing it on a presentation right now um there are ways that you can um help and um if you go to help Colorado now um dot org help Colorado now uh will actually line you up with individual community organizations so um there's a lot um that needs to be done how you can specifically help um really depends on what your abilities are I'm getting emails from people who are trying to figure out where they can get medical equipment because they have it if you have a specific need or have a specific strength that you think our state could use once again just don't hesitate to reach out let me know and and we're talking to our state local and federal partners um all all the time every day yeah and this is daniel just to add to that healthcollarownnow.org you can sign up to volunteer you can sign up to donate whatever your abilities are will match you with with work that needs to be done right now and then also of course vitalint.org to uh if you're willing to donate blood that's in high demand right now you can donate by community to keep that there and then in terms of the long term yeah we're here at the department of labor we're just looking to see what what kind of long-term impact this will have on the economy it may just be a short-term impact it may be that the economy starts right up and we move along but chances are it could be a longer-term impact that we need to invest in our workforce and look for different opportunities there all right anything else jessica um it looks like uh somebody had a question if you could publish the link for your sunday's town hall again if you could announce that or publish that somewhere that would be great absolutely we'll we'll we'll get the link published um on on my facebook page and we'll send it out in an email if you don't get my emails once again you can reach out to me and i'll make sure we can do that you can also type in your email address in the chat box there we'll make sure to capture that and put you on our list uh and it'll be once again conducted through zoom so hopefully everyone is is familiar with the platform now i think um i think that's the end of our questions um there is a it looks like in the group chat Anna Finkelstein is it steen um just put um another resource for a center for people with disabilities so um if you guys have a chance it's kind of lengthy so get a chance to look at that anybody else have any questions on the phone i had one that i sent in that we didn't get to can you hear me okay okay yes so um as you know boulder county property taxes are very high and they're actually my highest expense i own two commercial buildings is there any discussion about uh postponing like i paid the first half of the property taxes the second half's due in june is there any discussion about postponing that without penalty to pay those after the june deadline so um once again i'll put this out there but i'll also you know reach out to our local partners in the division of property taxation on this one as well um you know i know the irs has as put a delay on a receipt of taxes right now um and i've asked the state of colorado to look at mirroring that delay for um for state taxes um i i think that you know this is a good time is as good a time as any to talk about how we do that and how quickly that happens um i it's something i completely agree with you on though and um i haven't gotten that many contacts about it but i imagine i will as we get closer and closer to the deadline and so that's something i'll get to work on and if you've got ideas about what that would look like and how we can proceed um definitely let me know um there's there's a lot of trickle-down effects that honestly a lot of people need to take into consideration even how the senior tax work-off program might work in a situation where we have a stay-at-home order so um so a lot to be a lot to be told on that one and um you know once again if you email me i will get back with you with a better more complete answer than what i've given you right now okay great thank you very much any other questions if there's nothing else for the time being um i know we we it basically budgeted one to two one to two thirty for this i want to thank everyone for for being on um as long as they have um we're going to keep doing these as long as you keep thinking they're valuable i know that we've got more questions than we do answers and still i'll be getting back to work to get you answers to those questions as quickly as possible i do want to thank the chamber of commerce once again and all of our speakers for just taking the time right now to um to participate in this because the only way that we're going to figure this out is is by figuring this out together and i feel the pressure and i know all of you do too and and i i hope that we can light a fire under our federal government to get those relief packages through quickly and to the people who need it the most as quickly as possible if anyone else has any wrap up comments that they want to make from our presenters group um feel free to make them now but otherwise once again i just want to thank you all for your time and we're going to do everything we can to get help to the people who need it the most the fastest all right well once again rep singer at gmail.com or 303-875-4727 you can text that's probably a little faster than calling right now 303-875-4727 rep singer at gmail.com and once again i can't thank you enough for just taking the time today and we'll get everyone some answers and and find a way to move forward that will hopefully help our entire community agree everybody be safe and be healthy and like you said we will get through this together