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7.B. - Page 4 of 17 DISCUSSION Feedback Received From the Redwood City Small Business Community To help Redwood City's business community mitigate the economic impact of coronavirus (COVID-19), City staff is actively coordinating with governmental agencies and regional partners to identify and connect local businesses to economic assistance programs. In order to share this information with businesses, a City Business Resources Call Center was created. City staff has been proactively contacting all businesses in the City's business license database. During calls that staff has initiated with businesses, businesses have identified what type of assistance is needed. The most common responses (ranked in priority order) are as follows: (1) Is my businesses considered an essential business under the Shelter in Place Order, and may I remain open? (2) Can the City help me pay my rent? (3) Can the City help me pay my employees? (4) Can the City help me from getting evicted? (5) Can the City help me understand the Small Business Administration loan programs? In addition to making proactive business calls, the Economic Development Division has received nearly 300 calls from small businesses seeking assistance. Many of these calls have been focused on commercial eviction protections, as the small business community has become aware of the eviction protection efforts of San Mateo County and surrounding Bay Area cities and counties. Some small businesses have notified City staff that they have received verbal threats of potential eviction due to the non-payment of rent. Section 36937 of the Government Code authorizes the Council to adopt an urgency ordinance to protect the public peace, health, or safety, where there is a declaration of the facts constituting the urgency and the ordinance is adopted by a four-fifths vote of the Council. For Redwood City, this would require an affirmative vote by 6 members of the City Council in order to adopt the ordinance. Potential Restrictions on the Eviction of Small Businesses in Redwood City. A moratorium on evictions of small businesses, which would take effect immediately if adopted by the Council as an urgency measure, could prohibit an owner of commercial real property in the City from evicting a small business commercial tenant for non-payment of rent if the tenant establishes, through documentation, that their inability to pay rent is due to a decrease in net business income directly resulting from COVID-19 or the federal, state or local government response to COVID-19. Examples of qualifying circumstances could include reduced business income caused by illness; an inability to work; a reduction in operating hours, in available workforce, or consumer demand; increases in the tenant's health care expenses employee health care expenses for which the tenant is responsible; increases in the cost of supplies or other overhead expenses necessary to carry out the tenant's business; or temporary closure of the tenant's business. Similar to the County's ordinance, a qualifying small business could be one with annual gross receipts of not more than Two Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars ($2,500,000) for the 2019 calendar year. This $2,500,000 figure is prorated if a business did not operate for the entire 2019 calendar year. For example, Page 4 of 6 ..A . City of Redwood City 1017 Middlefield Road, Redwood City, CA. 94063 Tel: 650-780-7000 www.redwoodcity.ore 225