Community Business: Tourism update amid pandemic

Tourism update amid coronavirus pandemic

Iwrite this during the first week of April. With what has changed in just the past few weeks, it is anyone’s guess what the situation will be by the time this article is published.

Because of a dramatic reduc tion in traveling, some Bakersfield hotels pivoted from offering their rooms for over night stays to also offering flexible day rates. This change involved promoting David Lyman rooms as alternative home offices for those who found their normal home office a bit noisier than usual because of school closures. These properties promoted their large (and quiet) work spaces, free high-speed Wi-Fi and busi ness center assets, such as printers and office supplies.

One hotel that touted its rooms for alternative office spaces was the new Home 2 Suites by Hilton. Denise Taylor-Connor, the hotel’s director of sales, said an advan tage her property had was being an extended-stay hotel.

“The kitchen amenities and our full size suites allow comfort while limiting outside interac tion with others,” she said. “Another advantage is that we are pet-friendly.”

Taylor-Connor said her hotel’s staff at 8227 Brimhall Road had to be creative while thinking of everyone’s safety.

“We partnered with Modern Grub down the street from us on Calloway and Brimhall because they offer clean, healthy meal preparation and healthy takeout and delivery for our guests,” she said.

While many travelers rely upon hotel rooms, others bring their accommodations with them. At Bakersfield River Run RV Park, manager Ryan Uhles said that RV’s are self-contained, so they allow easy shelter-in-place accommodations.

“We have made some signifi cant changes to our operations,” said Uhles of his park at 3715 Burr St. “We are taking care of business over the phone and are offering curbside delivery or de livering to the site for mail and grocery items. We also installed sinks in each laundry room so that anyone using the laundry room has access to a sink to wash their hands whenever they are doing laundry.”

One change at a large Bakers field hotel was very visible and welcomed by many. Each night, lights in certain rooms at the Bakersfield Marriott at the Con vention Center were left on to spell out the word “HOPE.” The south side of the hotel, located at 801 Truxtun Ave., is visible for several blocks.

Two blocks east of the Marri ott, Visit Bakersfield temporarily closed its downtown visitor center on March 20. Signs on the doors directed travelers who stopped by to leave a telephone message and those messages were promptly returned by the visitor center staff.

One traveling couple, visiting in an RV from South Dakota, had visited Bakersfield in the past. They did not have a chance to see the Tehachapi Loop last time but wanted to visit it on this re turn trip. A Visit Bakersfield staff member was able to provide that information, including suggest ing the “Back Roads to the Tehachapi Loop” tour brochure that was available for downloading online.

Those visitors sent back an email that “the driving tour was great! We got to see some great rural country and will be back at some point to investigate the area again.”

With many local residents fol lowing stay-at-home orders, Visit Bakersfield unveiled a weekly

CALIFORNIAN FILE PHOTO

Lights left on in vacant hotel rooms spell the word “HOPE” at the Bakersfield Marriott at the Convention Center.

coloring contest. Each week a new page featuring a popular Ba kersfield location was unveiled, with a prize going to the winning entrant. The contest began with the Majestic Fox Theater, with the winner receiving a Two Hour Blaster Expedition Family Fun Pack from Bakersfield’s own River’s End Rafting & Adventure Company, valued at $180.

In addition to helping families through some of the boredom of isolation, the contest sought to educate residents of many notable Bakersfield landmarks, promote local businesses and leverage spending once the stayat-home orders were lifted.

Several local travel partners also provided educational and entertainment options to those who were homebound. The Kern County Museum posted frequent tours of its notable artifacts led by collections curator Bethany Rice, along with suggestions for at-home projects from the mu seum’s Lori Brock Children’s Discovery Center. CALM, the California Living Museum, posted a variety of videos of its animals, including weigh-in time with raccoons, porcupine chewing on plants and feeding time for

PHOTO COURTESY OF VISIT BAKERSFIELD

The weigh-in of raccoons was one of the activities shared by the California Living Museum (CALM) through videos posted during school closures.

a burrowing owl. Those videos, and others, also were shared by Visit Bakersfield to help educate residents about local attractions and amenities.

After all, when travel resumes it will be those residents who will be asked by friends and family about things to see and do in California’s ninth largest city.

David Lyman, Ph.D., is manager of Visit Bakersfield. He and his staff help visitors from through out the world spend their money and find “The Sound of Some thing Better” in California’s ninth-largest city. They are avail able toll-free 866-425-7353 or at Info@VisitBakersfield.com.

Give Big Kern to support local nonprofits through COVID-19 crisis with Online Giving Day Platform

In good times, California nonprofits are under-resourced.

According to the California Association of Nonprofits (www. CalNonprofits.org), 70% of char ities are all-volunteer-run, 68% of those that receive government funding (federal, state and local) say it does not cover the full cost of contracted programs and services, and 33% of nonprofit leaders say federal funding has decreased for them in the last 12 months.

Survey data from nonprofit and social enterprise lender the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s latest “State of the Sector” report from 2018, reveals that 86% of non profits nationally say demand for services keeps rising, yet 66% of them find offering competitive pay for em ployees a top chal lenge and, for seven consecutive years, fewer than 25% of nonprofits surveyed Louis Medina have said they had more than six months of cash in reserve.

San Joaquin Valley nonprof its, including those in Kern, fare even worse, according to CalNonprofits: • Valley nonprofits serve 11% of the state’s population but only receive 4% of total nonprofit revenue compared to Bay Area nonprofits, which serve 19% of the state’s population but re ceive 35% of the state’s nonprofit revenue. • Bay Area and Los Angeles foun dations together control 89% of all foundation grantmaking dollars, while San Joaquin Valley foundations control only 1%. • Of all California nonprofits re ceiving government funding, 66% (a whole two-thirds) are in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego, while only 6% are in the

Billy the Give Big Goat’s social-distancing message.

San Joaquin Valley.

Enter COVID-19. These are bad times and nonprofits are strug gling even more.

A number of communi ty-based organizations have had to cancel much-needed fund raisers in March, April and May due to social-distancing require ments. Shelter-in-place directives have caused many of them to temporarily suspend or scale back fee-for-service programs that cannot be offered remotely. The leaders of all-volunteer-run nonprofits may be facing finan cial hardships due to lost income from day jobs that are on hold indefinitely.

From our experience of quickly mobilizing COVID-19 relief funds at Kern Community Foundation, thanks to the phil anthropic generosity of local corporate and individual donors, the grant requests we have re ceived from scores of nonprofits from all corners of Kern have amounted to much more — in the six figures — than the funds could give out.

Why give to nonprofits through our Online Giving Day Platform?

Going back to the good times, despite all the challenges Cali fornia’s nonprofit sector faces, CalNonprofits says its output represents 15% of our gross state product. Charities generate close to $274 billion each year in an nual revenue and bring in more than $40 billion from out-of-state sources. One out of every 14 jobs in California is at a nonprofit. Vol unteers contribute the equivalent of $16.6 billion in unpaid labor to the state’s economy. And 4 out of 5 Californians deem nonprofits to operate more ethically, efficiently and frugally than for-profit busi nesses or government.

From animal rescue and lowcost spay-and-neuter efforts, to affordable child- and elder-care

options, to veteran services, to environmental justice, to home lessness and hunger prevention, nonprofits are woven into the fabric of the quality of life we en joy in California.

But now we’re in some of the worst times our state, nation and world have ever had to face.

If you have been helped by a nonprofit in any capacity or know someone who has, con sider making a donation to any of the more than 130 charities fundraising through Give Big Kern, Kern’s official “Online Day of Giving,” at a time when they need funding the most.

Just go to www.givebigkern. org, search for a nonprofit by name or cause and give. The website has been accepting do nations since April 5, and will stay open till May 6, one day after Give Big Kern Day, which this year falls festively on Cinco de Mayo.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOUIS MEDINA

You can pay with a major credit card; through mobile pay options such as Apple Pay, Goo gle Pay or Microsoft Pay; and, if making a gift of $100 or more, through your bank account using automated clearing house.

If you don’t have money to give now, use the Volunteering page on the drop-down menu of the website to make a pledge of volunteer hours to one of the participating nonprofits. They are surely going to need a lot of peo ple power to get their operations back up and running when so cial-distancing restrictions have been lifted.

Louis Medina is the Director of Community Impact for Kern Community Foundation, which hosts the Give Big Kern Online Day of Giving each year on the first Tuesday in May. You can reach him at Louis@kernfounda tion.org.

Prouty Matrix: A risk management tool every business needs to model frequency, severity risks

Country western artist Kenny Rogers passed away re cently and is mourned by many, especially here in “Nash ville West,” as Bakersfield is often called.

Rogers was an effective risk manager at the poker table. He knew “when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em and when to walk away.” But how does anyone in business acquire this same knowledge regarding risks faced by their organization?

His lyrics re ferred to gambling. Many see insur ance as gambling. However, there is John Pryor a major difference.

In gambling, no risk is created until a bet is placed. In business, whether we hold ’em or fold ’em, risks are perpetually present and a severe threat to the financial solvency of any business.

The challenge is for us to know how to treat each risk — not solely through insurance but also through noninsurance solutions.

A risk management tool called the Prouty Matrix, named for its creator, is recommended. It is described in depth in my book, “Quality Risk Manage ment Fieldbook,” available on Amazon and from the publisher, International Risk Management Institute in Dallas. In the limited space here, the following de scription nevertheless may be helpful.

Its purpose is to help busi ness owners decide what risk management alternative actions should work best for them. These are the customary finan cial alternatives: • Risk assumption: Total funding of any loss from internal finan cial resources. • Noninsurance risk transfer: By written agreement, usually in the form of a “hold harmless” or “in demnification” provision. • Insurance risk transfer: Com mercial insurance. • Combined risk assumption and commercial insurance in which a high deductible is used ($100,000 or higher) or formal self-insurance with a high, cata strophic “stop loss” ($500,000 or higher) reinsured by an “excess insurance carrier.” • Total avoidance of the risk: By not building in a low-elevation flood zone or not engaging in a high-risk project or venture.

Each of these actions is typi cally coupled with multiple effective levels of risk control. For example: • Fire prevention measures — fire suppression (automatic sprinkler) systems, safety and driver training — to reduce employee injuries and deaths. • Security measures — alarm systems, safes, internal account ing controls and other risk reduction measures — to prevent liability claims of all kinds.

Each risk facing your business needs to be applied to the Prouty Matrix in terms of the probabil ity of its frequency of occurrence and its maximum dollar amount of severity. Then you’ll have an indication of what appears to be the best action to take for each risk.

Not all risks are commercially insurable. The requisites of a commercially insurable risk are that the risk must be fortuitous (unexpected), measurable in terms of dollar loss, definite in time and place and not catastrophic.

This is the reason floods, terrorism, war, pandemics, etc. cannot be commercially insured. In many instances, the federal government (not constrained by these criteria) can do so in the public sector what commercial insurers cannot do in the private sector. Only the federal govern ment can “print money” to avoid insolvency.

A new opportunity for Con gress — although ignored so far — is business interruption reinsurance funded by the fed eral government. Virtually every business property insurance policy includes business inter ruption coverage. This coverage provides needed cashflow during any shutdown to enable business owners to meet pay roll obligations and pay other expenses that necessarily con tinue even though all normal revenue-generating operations are shut down.

Insurers are well positioned to calculate the dollar amount of a business interruption loss.

They usually can even make advance payments to assure adequate cash flow for the business during its shutdown. With the federal government reimbursing insurers for their payments to businesses, this is a much better method than others proposed by Congress to help businesses survive the current pandemic.

One of my favorite stories is about a family owned manufac turer on the East Coast who experienced a total fire loss and, therefore, total shutdown of his operations. The owner was regarded as a hero by the media and especially by his employ ees because he unbelievably continued their salaries even though there was no work they could do in the wake of the fire. Insurance was not mentioned

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as the actual source of these payments — but that’s OK. Vir tue is its own reward.

As has long been said, “You can’t insure against every thing.” Therefore, this matrix tool should be helpful to you in deciding which risks should be insured and which risks can be assumed, transferred to others or totally avoided.

Then you should enjoy one of the many benefits of risk management — a quiet night’s sleep.

John Pryor, CPCU, ARM, is a risk management and general man agement consultant for CSU Bakersfield’s Small Business De velopment Center. For management counsel (without any fee), go to www.csub.edu/sbdc for full information.

STIMULUS

Continued from PAGE 1 ❚ As social distancing continues to be a necessary tool to

prevent the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus, a wide range of services has been developed to counsel business owners and entrepreneurs.

able loan program designed to help companies retain their workers. • The additional incentive of a 50% refundable payroll tax credit on worker wages for companies retaining employees. • Relaxation of net operating loss-reduction rules. • Delay in payment of the employer portion of Social Security payroll taxes. • Expansion of unemployment insurance benefits for sole proprietors and other self-employed workers. • The targeting of a portion of the $425 billion in funds appropriated to the Fed eral Reserve’s credit programs to help small businesses.

Nearly half of America’s private-sector workers get paychecks from compa nies with less than 500 employees, and a third of those work for businesses with fewer than 100 workers. The SBA and its partners — the nationwide network of Small Business Development Centers, Women’s Business Centers, Veterans Business Outreach Centers and SCORE — have long nurtured this vital sector of the U.S. economy. The record-setting stimulus bill makes the agency’s role even more important.

In these particularly trying times, the Small Business Development Center at CSU Bakersfield is helping local companies maintain access to capital by ma

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Kern Business Journal 3700 Pegasus Bakersfield, CA 93302 Presorted Standard U.S. Postage PAID Bakersfield, CA Permit No. 838 Apartment developers seek new ways to get deals done BY JOHN COX

Depending on what indica - tors you’re looking at, now might seem like the right time to develop new apartment complexes in Bakersfield. Demand is strong and supply short by virtually every measure. Vacancies are extremely low, rents are on the rise and exist ing developments fetch multiple offers as soon as they’re listed for sale. Some projects are moving forward, to be sure, and Sac - ramento’s recent emphasis on affordable housing is seen as offering some help. But for local developers weighing investment in new multifamily residen - tial properties, construction of market-rate projects remains a tough sell. “It’s a strong rental market, but you scratch your head and ask, ‘Does this make any sense at all to roll the dice and put out that kind of investment?’”

Bakersfield developer Ron Froehlich said. “There’s better ways to make a better return with less risk.” The situation speaks to a conundrum at the heart of Cali fornia’s housing crisis. Despite Sacramento’s efforts to make sure renters have an affordable place to live, developers say the high cost of building anything except government-subsidized housing is all but prohibitive for the private sector. EXPENSIVE PROPOSITION Development-related costs, from labor and materials to mu - nicipal impact fees and regula - tory requirements, have shot up in recent years. Bakersfield developer Tom Dee said his total costs have risen at least 30 percent during the past three years. A 16-unit building that cost $95 per square foot to build a few years ago now costs $145 per square foot, Cost rises in the market PHOTO COURTESY OF FULLER APARTMENT HOMES Park West at Stockdale River Ranch, by Fuller Apartment Homes and Bolthouse Properties, is a 312-unit luxury rental housing complex scheduled to begin construction in December at Heath Road and Stockdale Highway in southwest Bakersfield. Please see APARTMENTS | 6

neuvering through the red tape of loans and incentive programs.

As social distancing continues to be a necessary tool to prevent the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus, a wide range of services has been developed to counsel business owners and entrepreneurs. These free services include tele phone access to experienced SBDC consultants, online resources and business guides and weekly webinars.

Examples of some recent webinars are “Telecommuting Tips and Tools” and “Managing Your Small Business During the Pandemic Crisis.”

For information about participating in upcoming webinars, which are con ducted every Wednesday from noon to 1 p.m., go to the website at www.csubsbdc.com or consult the SBDC CSU Bakersfield Facebook page. Those unable to participate in a live online event can watch recorded webinars on the CSUB SBDC YouTube channel.

This is truly the place to be for current information small businesses need to navigate the crisis. In many cases, businesses directly affected by the crisis will need funding and available resources to survive.

Acknowledging that the massive help being provided to the nation’s small businesses in the stimulus plan may seem complicated, Mnuchin has promised application procedures will be simplified as program details are developed. The assistance provided by the SBDC at CSU Bakersfield will be critical for local business to keep up to date, and to identify and access benefits.

One of five service centers within the University of California, Central Cali fornia SBDC Regional Network, the SBDC in Bakersfield assists small business owners in Kern, Inyo and Mono counties by providing free consulting, small business training and research. For more information, go to www.csub.edu/ sbdc.

Kelly Bearden is the director of the Small Business Development Center at Califor nia State University, Bakersfield.

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