BUFFALO, N.Y. — Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz talked about the hurdles that lie ahead for the county amid the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to reopen the region.
Poloncarz was on a video conference call with the New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) Wednesday morning to discuss the process of moving forward and what reopening might look like.
"We [the counties] are the front lines of the response for COVID-19. We are running the health departments. We are running the emergency services departments. We are working in direct contact with the hospitals,"Poloncarz said. "Throughout this entire crisis, it is counties that are at the lead."
Poloncarz said Erie County is facing a projected budget deficit of $220 million due to lost revenue.
"We are in a significant financial situation here. We continue to work with the governor's team as well as others to try and meet parameters that he set forth with regards to those seven or eight indicators [for reopening]," Poloncarz said.
One of the requirements deals with contact tracing and people who will identify those who may have come into contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus. Once those people are identified, further measures can be taken to stop the spread, such as isolation, quarantine, and additional testing.
Poloncarz said the county needs 277 contact tracers, based on the state's requirement to have 30 contact tracers for every 100,000. The county currently has 20 contact tracers.
He said the county is re-purposing staff from the Department of Social Services and Department of Senior Services. They will be trained to do contact tracing.
As for testing requirement, Poloncarz said Erie County should be able to meet state requirements "very soon."
"Unfortunately our hospitalization data lately has not been very great, though the last few days we have seen a downward trend with regards to hospitalizations as well as discharges exceeding new admissions," Poloncarz said.
Poloncarz stressed the need for financial help from the federal government.
"We must have a stimulus package 4.0. If we don't have a stimulus package 4.0, we're going to have to do drastic cuts across all county departments. A worst case scenario is what we are looking at," Poloncarz said. "I've asked all departments to come up with a plan to cut by 13.1% of their budgets, which because it's going to be in the middle of the year, it's 13.1% annualized."
Poloncarz said all county employees are still being paid, and to date, there have not been any furloughs. He didn't rule out layoffs or furloughs in the future, especially if the county doesn't get any financial assistance.
NYSAC is releasing a report today that the head of the group says will show the economic impact of the current public health crisis. NYSAC Executive Director Stephen Acquario said the financial impact for counties across the state is approaching $3.5 billion.
The financial decline is the result of four main factors: 1) declining revenue, especially sales tax and hotel occupancy tax, 2) higher spending, due mostly to responding to the COVID-19 crisis, 3) the loss of potential state reimbursement, and 4) the potential and significant loss of small businesses.
Acquario said counties need a federal stimulus package to address the revenue losses.
"It is very difficult to discuss reopening in any capacity, whether it be a slow roll out, a 60 day, 90 day, 120 day roll out of reemerging from this, without the federal resources to help offset the losses that we have sustained," Acquario said.
How will reopening work in Erie County?
"I think we all understand that we have to go about this in a manner that protects the general public," Poloncarz said when speaking about re-opening Erie County. "That is not going to be well received by everyone — I agree we need to do this in phases — there seems to be an expectation among many in the public, when we talk about re-opening, that there's going to be this mass re-opening. That's not it."
He said getting back to normal is a delicate balance of protecting the health and safety of the community and the desire to get the economy back up and running.
Poloncarz reminded the public to wear masks in public and practice social distancing.
