One year later, COVID still exacting a toll
On Friday, the Ricochet Rec Center in Imperial announced on Facebook that it has closed permanently.
Sheila Kruger, owner of the center, confirmed the news. “It’s a combination of several factors,” she explained, “but one reason is it was closed for a year, and we had ongoing costs.”
She said closing the center made a lot of sense, as rent and utility bills still had to be paid.
“It just cost too much,” she said, adding customers on trampolines come in close contact with others, so the county decided they are not eligible to reopen.
“We are not in a position to reopen,” Kruger said.
Ricochet is just the latest casualty in a year-long slog through a worldwide public health emergency that continues to exact a staggering toll on Imperial Valley communities.
March 20, 2020, will be a date Imperial County residents will remember for a long time as local businesses, including restaurants, schools, churches and fitness centers closed after the county’s health officer made a stay at home order through the end of the month.
A few days before the county’s health order was set to expire. Gov. Gavin Newsom made a similar order for the entire state.
For a few weeks in the spring of 2020, some of the most precious commodities in America were toilet paper, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, a stores everywhere were cleared out of stock in a matter of hours by anxious customers driven by fear and uncertainty.
It turned out, keeping a months-long supply of toilet paper probably wasn’t necessary, but that doesn’t mean there was no cause for alarm. As of Friday, 24,865 persons in Imperial County had contracted COVID-19, the name given the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which first appeared in the Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The vast majority – 24,123 – have recovered, but 688 have died.
Elective surgeries already scheduled at local hospitals had to be postponed from the end of March to the beginning of September, and after two months, when numbers surged, the postponements were reinstated. They’ve only been lifted recently as COVID-19 numbers improved.
Tumultuous times for cities
The city of Imperial declared a state of local emergency due to COVID-19 on March 18, 2020. Since that time, the city has projected an overall economic shortfall to its general fund of $2.3 million dollars over two fiscal years.
The city has received nine letters from businesses that have had to close their doors and spent about $444,000 dollars in direct operational response.
The city has facilitated more than $100,000 in grants to small businesses through its CARES
Act funds, provided over $190,000 in utility delinquency fee forgiveness, and assisted account holders with nearly $147,000 in delinquent utility bill grants through its partnership with the county.
Imperial Assistant City Manager Alexis Brown said the city is thankful for its partnerships with the county Office of Emergency Services, Imperial Valley Business Recovery Task Force and others who have worked so hard to bring resources to the community.
“We recognize our own City Council for providing leadership and adapting through a constantly changing, and (at times) tumultuous, political environment,” Brown wrote in an email. “We feel there is a light at the end of the tunnel through the diligent and tireless administration of the vaccines.”
She added that the community must continue to work with its legislators to advocate for a more equitable distribution of resources.
“Although our numbers are declining, it is important to note, that we’re not out of the woods yet,” Brown said. “However, we’ve gone into this together, and together is how we’ll get to the other side.”
Imperial is not alone in reduced sales tax figures because of COVID-19.
Calexico City Manager Miguel Figueroa said up to the third quarter of calendar year 2020, its sales tax audit reflects a 25.9 percent sales tax loss due to the effects of COVID-19 on the city’s economy.
“Of course, we as a city were able to create the needed savings by reducing general fund expenditures through a budget amendment resolution that was approved by (the) City Council,” Figueroa said. “It is worth noting that we were able to do this without touching our reserves and not impacting our city workforce.”
El Centro administrators said it would be too difficult to track the number of businesses closed during the pandemic, as some opened after being closed for months and others may or may not ever reopen.
They pointed to the boarded-up Carrows Restaurant on Imperial Avenue as just one business that no one knows if it will ever reopen.
During the height of the pandemic, El Centro closed its skate park and aquatic center along with several different facilities.
El Centro Finance Manager Richard Romero reported sales tax figures from 2019 to
2020 decreased by about $246,000, going from $13.09 million in 2019 to $12.84 million in 2020.
When comparing the numbers to 2018, sales tax figures for the city decreased by $5.2 million.
After two months of 2021 Romero is projecting sales tax for the current year to increase by $258,000 from 2020
While several businesses reopened more than a week ago after the county met the state’s metrics to move to the substantial tier, gyms and many restaurants were closed for a year.
Brawley City Manager Tyler Salcido outlined to the council the first six months of the fiscal-year budget from June to the end of December.
Like El Centro, he said it would be extremely difficult to determine the number of businesses that had to close for good because of the pandemic.
Projecting out he expects sales tax figures to be down by about 25 percent by the end of the current fiscal year.
In 2019-20, $2.97 million was budgeted for sales tax in the general fund and is projected to go down to $2.26 million by the time the fiscal year ends.
Salcido also said transient lodging is projected to be down by 27 percent from the 2019-20 fiscal year, decreasing from $412,288 to $301,200.
The local economy also took a hit as a result of November’s scaled-down Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo, which is typically the city’s biggest event of the year.
The impact on the local economy is expected to be significant. Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo Committee President Carson Kalin said the loss of revenue countywide could be close to $10 million.
“The city is hopeful that as businesses are allowed to reopen and return to their pre pandemic normal business operations the city’s tax revenues will follow suit,” Salcido said.
Businesses hobbled
Joel Gonzalez is among the countless number of businesses owners who had to close or scale back their establishments the past year because of COVID-19.
Gonzalez opened a new location for his Ricochet R/C Raceway Hobby Shop in El Centro in November 2019, not knowing that in four months he would be losing about $25,000 a month on the venture.
Gonzalez had to close the El Centro business for 2.5 months, and when allowed to reopen, no one was allowed inside, so it operated curbside.
“It was a hit with no service whatsoever,” he said. “It was a loss of revenue.”
He said he was used to seeing 40 to 50 people at one time visiting the Ricochet R/C Raceway Hobby Shop.
Several programs and groups, including students who liked using the track at the Ricochet were not allowed — even when curbside delivery was given the green light.
Fortunately for Gonzalez, who considered closing the business, he had savings that allowed the business not to close completely. Plus, he said, he had an understanding landlord.
“Luckily, we had some money saved up,” he said. “It crossed my mind (about closing). We decided to keep it open.”
The county earlier this month moved into the red tier that allowed retail businesses to expand their operations capacity to 50 percent.
The moment the state and county allowed retail business to open at 25 percent capacity Gonzalez took advantage of the opportunity.
“We could not afford to stay shut down,” he said.
His other business, Desert RV in Brawley, never closed, as it was deemed essential.
Gonzalez said the business is rebounding with a lot of customers visiting, but he lost a large amount of business in the pandemic.
“It will take some time for us to get back to normal,” he said.
What Gonzalez didn’t do was lay off employees at the height of the pandemic.
“I kept paying them,” he said. “I kept them on the payroll.”
Restaurants have been another group of businesses significantly impacted by the yearlong pandemic.
Carlos Weir, owner of The Courtroom restaurant in El Centro and the Las Chabelas restaurant in Brawley, said the year was tough with COVID-19 restrictions limiting restaurants and business from opening.
Before the pandemic Weir had 30 employees, but with the lack of customers, he had to cut his staff to 10 workers. He now has 12 employees.
Weir said laying off employees was probably the toughest part of the pandemic, as he realized they had families to support. Some of his employees were afraid to work, as they feared catching the virus.
During the pandemic, one employee from each of his two restaurants tested positive for the virus, but he added there was no outbreak.
While he thought at one time he might have to close The Courtroom restaurant since nearby government offices shut down, he said the community responded.
“We knew it was going to get bad,” he said. “We saw we could keep it going (by adjusting the hours).”
He added there is a big difference from customers coming in for a meal than taking orders by phone for curbside pickup or delivery.
“We really never got out of the first level,” he said. “We lost a large percentage of our business.”
The bar at the Courtroom has been and still is closed as indoor and outdoor alcohol service is not allowed independent of food service.
Weir said he is hopeful the county moves into the orange tier to allow alcohol to be served outdoors. This could happen soon with the rate of new cases daily per 100,000 population dropping to about 2.5, far below the allowed threshold of 3.9 cases.
Other casualties
Shutdowns didn’t just impact businesses. Imperial County began limiting people inside its buildings, and like many others started checking temperatures of employees and visitors as they walked into the door, and meetings by Zoom became the new normal.
To reduce the spread of COVID-19, many county offices remain closed to public access and are operating with minimal in-person staff. When possible, services that can be provided virtually have gone online. Employees able to telecommute are currently working from home.
The county also closed all of its parks for a while, while cities did so selectively.
For a time, virtually every student in the county was home-schooled, as classrooms were shut down and instruction was conducted remotely via the computer app Zoom -- to name a business that has prospered under the pandemic.
County schools either have or soon will return to in-person instruction, many using a hybrid model. Meanwhile, most students have spent a year at home. There were no traditional graduation ceremonies, proms, athletic events or other typical school activities.
In Calexico, the average school year for the public school district consists of 183 classroom days. At this point, that’s also a fair approximation of how much classroom instruction students in the district have lost to the pandemic.
Staff and teachers at Calexico Unified School District were told they would be given one month’s notice of when classrooms would reopen.
When the CUSD School Board unveiled its plan on March 11 to resume in-person classes at 25 percent capacity for April 12, some teachers wondered how that would work.
Imperial Irrigation District Director Norma Sierra Galindo is also a high school teacher in Calexico. She said her classes use labs, so she is concerned how social distancing will play out under the circumstances. She added most of her students say they prefer remote learning now that they have gotten the hang of it.