CHAMBER LEADER KNOWS...
From the very beginning of the lockdown that closed the doors on the majority of businesses in Lawton, Dr. Sylvia Burgess has heard the worry in the voices. As the interim President and CEO of the Lawton-Fort Sill Chamber of Commerce, she had to take the phone calls of business owners who are struggling to find ways to keep their businesses afloat.
Now, local and state officials have slowly started to reopen businesses, but Burgess knows the hard times are not over as the impact of COVID-19 is still being felt and will continue for quite some time
“As businesses are getting ready to reopen, I think the number one thing is making sure they’re reopening safely and taking care of themselves and their customers and their staff,” Burgess said. “And then we’ll get ready to have a new normal. That’s the catchphrase right now. It’s going to be a new normal.”
A chamber of commerce is an organization that promotes and protects the interests of the business community. That can be for a town, city, state or even a country.
So, when the spread of COVID-19 started to impact the welfare of the business sector, it’s the chamber of commerce who had to wear many hats during the crisis. That includes making sure their members were get- ting the right information.
“When we started to hear conversations about shutdowns, we started to try and get more in-tune with those things and make sure we had a focus on what was going on,” said Rodger Kerr, President of the Altus Chamber of Commerce. “Make sure that the information we were going to get and push out to our clients and members in our business community was factual information and not rumor. We tried to put information out that was even-keeled and on-target.”
In the first few weeks of the pandemic, that was a tougher chore than expected. With city, state and national officials not always on the same page, it was a difficult process finding out who was going to be impacted and how.
That was especially the case when the lockdown was announced, and businesses were trying to find out who could keep their businesses open and who couldn’t.
“I think a lot of people sometimes misunderstand the chamber’s role or what we do in a community,” Kerr said. “Some of them thought that we were maybe in charge of what the essential business list was or looked like, or if we could help them be on it or off it. We fielded several calls on that. We advocate for our businesses, but a lot of times we just answer questions and try to give clean, clear-cut information so they know where to go. So, we were forwarding lots of folks to different agencies.”
Much like every chamber of commerce throughout the area and state, the Lawton-Fort Sill group has had to deal with its own share of problems since the spread of COVID-19 began to impact the business sector.
“Just like other businesses, the Chamber has struggled to continue to pay bills with issues because much of our funding is from hotel/motel tax receipts, and with most hotels and motels right now, occupancy is averaging around 5%,” Burgess said. “That’s had a huge impact on income. As a result, the Chamber itself has had to lay four people off really, and that’s impacted what we can do.”
Despite the problems, Kerr says her limited team was able to keep on doing their job of helping their members.
“We continued to work full-time,” Kerr said. “We’re working remotely from home, and we’re pushing out information to the businesses. We’re still answering the phone every day and answering questions. We’ve done lots of assistance on guidance on the SBA loans and trying to help people get to the right people to help them be able to apply for those loans.”
Oklahoma was one of the first states to announce they would start reopening businesses last week with phase one of the Open Up and Recover Safely (OURS) plan. That includes personal care businesses and state parks.
But it was too late for some small businesses. “I know that as of (April 23) with our latest data, about 415 businesses were opened in the community at that time, and that’s really less than 25% of all of our businesses in this community,” Kerr said.
“We have heard from many, many businesses who are struggling. Some of them are permanently shutting their doors because they just couldn’t take the hit from the downtime. They were already struggling in the economy and, as a result, they’re closing down. So, we’ll lose a number of businesses after this is over.”
Part of the problem for some of those owners was their inability to get some of the assistance they thought they would be getting.
“So, from large businesses to very small businesses, there has been lots of people applying for government assistance and still having some struggles receiving a lot of that, such as the EIDL loans (Economic Injury Disaster Loans),” Kerr said. “I have yet to talk to anybody that one has come through, so I think the government’s out of money and trying to push more money out to satisfy those loans. I don’t think they anticipated the demand would be what it has been.”
With Phase two of the OURS having gone into effect May 1, chambers of commerce around the state are helping to ease the process.
“Full recovery won’t be instantaneous. It will be an extensive process requiring calculated and comprehensive policies to champion recovery for all businesses,” said Chad Warmington, president and CEO of the State Chamber of Oklahoma. “The State Chamber is ready to lead this effort. This is who we are. This is what we do.”