A sign requiring face masks before entering hangs on display next to a ‘closed’ sign last June in Chehalis.
A sign requiring face masks before entering hangs on display next to a ‘Closed’ sign Thursday afternoon in Chehalis.
In the time Lewis County has dedicated to the COVID-19 response, collaboration with various agencies around the county and the state has been an emphasized component.
In the county’s weekly Economic Recovery Forum on Wednesday, that collaborative effort extended to officials from Kittitas County. Kittitas County Commissioner Brett Wachsmith, Ellensburg Mayor Bruce Tabb and Kirk Holmes, the director of emergency management services at Perteet joined the call, to offer insight into how they’ve worked to weather the economic storm in Kittitas County and lend ideas.
Lewis County Manager Erik Martin mentioned Holmes’ office is in Ellensburg, which led to his work with the various cities, as well as the county. Additionally, Holmes serves as the President of the Kittitas County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
“Perteet is an infrastructure consulting company that does all kinds of different engineering, planning, and as Kirk’s title says, a lot of emergency management planning,” Martin said. “So this COVID response is right in his wheelhouse. He’s doing some really interesting things.”
Holmes said the COVID-19 response was “new, scary territory for everybody.”
Still, he said he knew that the importance of combining the county’s resources to avoid overlap was paramount.
“What we knew we had to do was start discussions about how do we bring all of our resources together,” Holmes said. “How do we marshall all of our intelligence and our technology so that we didn’t end up with four or five of the same groups working on the same problem?”
From there, according to Holmes, he was able to get in touch with Commissioner Wachsmith and Mayor Tabb to establish what he referred to as a “task force approach” a couple of months ago.
During the meeting, Holmes said the county and the city have taken legislative action to develop an economic recovery team, with what he calls a “high-level charter.” He said the team meets every Friday — with smaller meetings in between — to discuss the county’s response and added the team would be continuing to grow the effort in the coming weeks.
Tabb told the group that the collaboration between the City of Ellensburg and the Kittitas Board of County Commissioners has been a key for their effort, centered around helping people with financial difficulties such as paying rent, assisting community organizations like food banks and efforts in assisting the small business community.
“People that were probably much more territorial at the beginning of this have become much more collaborative in their willingness to share data, information and then push those out generally to the community,” Tabb said.
He said the collaborative effort has helped award business grants faster and seamlessly assemble ways in which to rank applications for grants. In three or four days, a community-based ranking team helped turn around 270 applications, according to Tabb. He also feels that the recovery group has been able to help magnify messages to the business community.
Wachsmith mentioned the importance of transparency as the response moves forward into the fall and making sure everyone is on the same page should new challenges arise. He added it’s especially important as the county looks to move forward into phase 3 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s “Safe Start” reopening plan.
“What we don’t want to see is, come fall, people wanting to go backwards as opposed to just staying the course,” Wachsmith said.
Lewis County commissioner Edna Fund asked those from Kittitas County if they had any advice for what the county shouldn’t do as it pertains to economic recovery.
Holmes, instead, offered a suggestion for what Lewis County could look to do. He pointed to the development of its own established economic recovery team.
“I would recommend to you, that you kind of take a look at formalizing this group and identifying other key people that you want to be working on this issue for you long term,” Holmes said.
Martin cited the county’s efforts with Lewis County Together and the various resources the group has been able to offer businesses. He also pointed to the work of Southwest Washington Fair Manager Tamara Hayes, who has adapted to the altered role of assisting with coronavirus relief fund grants.
