Our small business community has been hammered over the past year…the sport fishing constraints of last summer, the long forest industry strike, an interruption in our paper mill’s operations, and then the COVID-19 measures hit.
Pat Deakin
When the pandemic was declared, a small Port Alberni team sprang into action. We developed a set of questions, phoned over 600 businesses, found 300 willing to answer a survey, analyzed the responses, then published a two-page spread of the results along with sources of assistance for our businesses. The Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce did the calls and summarized the results; the Port Alberni Port Authority provided analysis and the Great BC Business Sale developed the insert. Before the results were fully known, Community Futures Alberni-Clayoquot announced a $1 million Emergency Loan Fund and began consulting free of charge with businesses.
Our Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) prepared, among others, strategic objectives to Encourage the Financial Recovery of Businesses and Residents. Community Futures created a ‘Holistic Economic Development Project’ listing deliverables it was prepared to commit to. The City identified a number of additional initiatives needing attention: labour force issues, shovel ready grant applications, municipal economic stimulus measures, empty storefronts and evolution of the economy.
Port Alberni’s City Council has now accepted a recommendation to redirect $140,000 of the economic development allocation (virtually the entire amount of the budget beyond staff costs) into the aforementioned strategic objectives, deliverables and initiatives.
We were amazed at the optimism most of our businesses declared in the phone survey but not surprised. After all many of them have been in existence for more than 50 years and know how to weather a business interruption. Several businesses figured out ways of supporting themselves in the situation, providing the services and products we value while observing the precautions necessary for protecting the health of themselves, their employees, their customers and their suppliers.
Whether the optimism will sustain, the support measures we are implementing and the pivot we are prepared to make will be enough remains to be seen. In his ‘Devotions on Emergent Occasions’ John Donne penned ‘No Man is an Island’. With this is mind, we end with thanks to the senior levels of government, Island organizations, provincial associations, our colleagues in other communities and above all, our health care staff and first responders who are working with us through these times.
Pat Deakin is the Economic Development Manager for the City of Port Alberni. He can be reached at 250-720-2527 or Patrick_deakin@portalberni.ca