Updates

Memo – Immediate and Long Term Needs for District 5 due to COVID-19

March 16, 2020

To: Byron Brooks, County Administrator, Lonnie Bell, Director, Community and Family Services Department

From: Commissioner Emily Bonilla, District 5

Date: March 16, 2020

Subject: Immediate Needs and Long Term Needs for District 5 due to COVID-19

This memorandum is in response to immediate and long term needs due to COVID-19 for my the residents of District 5. I’m looking for guidance and feedback that the County Administrator can provide to assist in this situation. I have provided some ideas, and I am open to others.

Immediate Needs

Eviction Prevention

Although the Sherrif’s office has stated, they would not evict anyone. Residents will still face the consequences of being behind on their bills and most live paycheck to paycheck, making it impossible to catch up. The county has a program to prevent eviction and keep people in their homes through our Orange County Human Services with the one-time crisis aid for rent program. Can we take into consideration some of the following:

The board can offer an expansion of this program by using additional funding from the $10 million we budgeted for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
We can limit this program to employees who are not getting paid during COVID-19 quarantine or business closings. I am concerned that some people may try to take advantage of the program and funding while still being paid by their employers. Also, another concern is that there are about 450,000 households that are in the ALICE category, the county counted 223,433 households that are renters, and we don’t have enough funding for all those families.
We can get an estimate of how many households may be affected so that we can have an idea of the amount of funding needed for relief.
If there are federal funds available from the new COVID-19 packages from the US Legislators, I wish for us to tap into those and not hesitate to apply for them.

Food

Elderly who are isolating themselves to protect themselves from exposure will need food delivered to them. Publix (Instacart) and Walmart both provide grocery delivery service but with a fee. These services both have a two week trial period. Is there anything else the county can do to assist the elderly in having groceries delivered?
For those persons whose employers do not pay them during the time of their quarantine or business closing, they will be short on funds to feed their families. Currently, services like Second Harvest and Meals on Wheels are overwhelmed and are having issues receiving funding and volunteers. We can provide grocery store gift cards for these families with the same type of qualifications as the one-time crisis aid for rent program.
As for school students, I am confident that the schools will provide lunches to those with free and reduced lunches as they do during the summer. As an idea for them, they can use a drive-thru model to deliver the lunches to limit exposure by keeping social distancing.

Internet Services in Rural Areas

Lack of Internet access can be a challenge when asked to work at home or for students. Even though Spectrum offers free services at this time, they are not servicing this area due to a lack of infrastructure. Verizon already has coverage in most of East Orange County, T-Mobile, and AT&T have limited coverage in East Orange County.

Verizon can provide Jetpack MiFi’s to families who lack adequate internet service to work at home or for students.
T-Mobile, who already have portable hotspots available, can bring to the East Orange County area, Cell on Wheels (COWs) to provide adequate coverage and their portable hotspots. After talking with someone at T-Mobile, they are not going to provide (COWs) to the area due to restrictions they created months ago, but have a contract with OCPS for the portable hotspots (which are no good in this area).
AT&T can increase the amount of access they allow through their lines as much as possible by making some upgrades to their boxes.

Paid Sick Leave during Quarantine or Business Closing due to COVID-19

While we wait for a bill by the US House H.R. 6201 to pass the Senate (unknown as the writing of this memo), we are not sure what the final package may include as they are still in negotiations. I urge our county to do something now. I suggest that we write two of the following:

Request that the Governor release the preemption of the county’s from requiring Paid Sick Leave of private companies.
Send a public letter kindly requesting companies to over Paid Sick Leave to their employees.

If the time comes that the Governor releases the preemption, I would ask that we follow the recommendations from the US House for pay for leave due to COVID-19 by companies with over 500 employees.

Long Term Solutions

Encourage companies to allow more opportunities to work from home. Working from home will help take more cars off the roads and also allow them to have in advance infrastructure for a time like this.
Work on improved landlord-tenant rights laws.
Internet Infrastructure in East Orange County – I have been working on this for years, looking for solutions and trying to work with service providers with no success. My last resort was asking the county to take responsibility to provide the infrastructure. I have already submitted my request by memo today. Solving the broadband issue in Rural East Orange County can help to provide equity when it comes to opportunities to the students and residents.
Lobby the state to release the preemption on Paid Sick Leave and allow the Counties the ability to regulate evictions.
Continue to diversify our economy. It is dangerous for our local economy to be dependent on one industry – the tourism industry.