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Date: 4/13/2021
EASTHAMPTON – Easthampton is participating in the Massachusetts Local Rapid Recovery Planning (LRRP) program to help their local businesses who have struggled throughout the pandemic.
The goal of the program is to provide Easthampton and its partners professional consulting services to develop a rapid recovery plan tailored to the unique economic challenges and COVID-19 impacts on Easthampton.
The first step for the project is to seek input from all Easthampton businesses and have them complete a survey to help the city understand the impact due to COVID-19, potential areas improvement for infrastructure, and input on future policy and investment decisions for the city.
According to Jeffrey Bagg, the city planner for Easthampton, businesses have until April 16 to complete the survey, which can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LRRPBiz?lang=en.
“We know that businesses in Easthampton have been impacted by COVID-19,” said Bagg. “So this was an opportunity for us to apply and get the technical assistance to come up with a plan.”
The city is partnering with the Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce for this project. According to Moe Belliveau, the executive director of the chamber, the chamber and the city are at the beginning of this process working with their assigned consultant.
“What the chamber has focused on over the last year is to be the vehicle that businesses can rely on to get clear, concise, vetted information so that they can get the right information on resources they needed quickly,” said Belliveau. “What I have learned over the past year is that compassion and empathy are key.”
The survey data and input from the business community will help the city and chamber develop the most “meaningful projects” for COVID-19 recovery. The survey results will also help to see what other city plans or documents within their master plan for businesses could be affected, according to Bagg.
“Anything we can do to support small local businesses, we want to line them up and show that we’ve identified this in other places as well,” said Bagg. “We have to prioritize and find out what would benefit the businesses the most.”
Throughout their Downtown Strategic Plan from 2020, Bagg and the city found that they do not have a great inventory of their businesses, nor do they have a lot of contact information from businesses. The survey, therefore, will work as an inventory for Easthampton businesses.
“It’s really important for Easthampton businesses to take the survey because it’s going to help the city come up with an inventory so we can really help,” said Bagg.
The city and chamber plan to spearhead other types of outreach to businesses after the survey is completed to talk about the results of the survey and what the results mean. This will also serve as an opportunity for businesses who were not able to complete the survey by April 16 to offer input on their situation.
The consultant will then collect this data, and there will also be a public presentation that will occur sometime in mid to late-May. According to Bagg, the public presentation will most likely involve a discussion surrounding the survey results, as well as an opportunity to outline and try to start talking about what could be the city’s action items could be with regard to the recovery plan.
The city is hoping that, by creating a plan with action items, the state will provide funding to Easthampton to help them accomplish their action plan.
“The state is always trying to encourage municipalities to go through the planning process so you have actions and a list, and then you’re ready to apply for funding,” said Bagg.
The city plans to gather all of the survey data, create a list of actions, and have a report ready by August.