Pasadena winding down restaurant assistance amid budget shortfalls - The Pasadena Star-News

Great Plates Delivered, a program hailed as a lifeline for Pasadena restaurants, will be winding down through February, as city officials reckon with declining reserve funds and an unclear reimbursement schedule from federal and state officials.

With the City Council’s decision on Monday, Nov. 9, Pasadena will commit an additional $430,865 to keep the program running for another three months. In the meantime, city staffers will work to transition seniors currently receiving meals from the program into other food assistance programs, potentially using the county’s version of this same program.

Council members appeared to appreciate the program, but it came with a tough-to-swallow price tag, as the city has burned through large portions of its reserves. Since the pandemic began, one of its primary reserve funds has declined from $13.8 million to $1.7 million; nearly all of the money was spent on pandemic-related expenses.

With this latest expenditure, the city will have spent nearly $2.3 million on this program alone, according to a staff report.

The money has helped 22 restaurants thus far, though only 21 are participating currently. Still, 110 people have kept their jobs as result of the program, and three establishments said they would have closed if not for Great Plates. Another three restaurants reopened as result, collectively rehiring 15 employees, the report says.

About 94% of the money spent on this program will likely be reimbursed by federal and state governments, Finance Director Matthew Hawkesworth told the council, but that “could take years,” he said. The city won’t see any money from the feds until the coronavirus emergency declaration is over.

Already, City Manager Steve Mermell said he anticipates “a need to make some budget adjustments in January.” If the city kept this program running, it could force cutbacks to city services, something no one wants to do.

While Councilman Andy Wilson said he was worried about the budgetary implications, “I’d be more inclined to pull back from this program if we felt the partial reopening of our restaurants was imminent.”

He expressed concern about cooler winter temperatures wreaking havoc on restaurants already-limited outdoor business.

“I really look at this as a lifeline for many of these restaurants,” he said. “And frankly, if 110 people (lose their jobs), now there’s another 110 people who probably need rental assistance or nutritional assistance.”

Wilson worried restaurants’ “ability to be resilient at this time is probably very limited, and that any support that gets turned off would put many of these, who are on the brink, over the edge.”

The council batted a few ideas around, trying to plant the seeds of a potential solution, to get out of the restaurant subsidy business without hurting local businesses.

Presumptive Mayor-elect Victor Gordo suggested pushing the county to fold Pasadena restaurants into the countywide Great Plates Delivered program, but it’s unclear if the effort will pay off.

There’s currently a waitlist for restaurants in the county’s program, Human Services Director Brenda Harvey-Williams told the council. While the city doesn’t know how long the waitlist is, Pasadena restaurants would have to apply and be accepted into the county’s program before they could join it. And if they were waitlisted, it’s unclear if they’ll ever see a benefit.

There’s no guarantee that any of them will be accepted, which is the same conundrum that prompted the city to start its own program, despite the county’s parallel effort.

Harvey-Williams said the seniors who are receiving meals from the city’s program shouldn’t have any trouble being accepted into the county’s.

Minutes earlier, city staff told the council the federal government would be providing the city $1.2 million in emergency dollars specifically earmarked for coronavirus-related expenses. City staff suggested committing the totality of the funds to expanding regional food banks and pantries, but the City Council asked for more alternatives before they committed to food and nutritional help.

Several council members, including Gordo, thought these types of services were already well-funded — providing meals to folks at a significantly lower cost than Great Plates Delivered — and wanted to know if the federal relief monies could be more effective elsewhere.

City Manager Steve Mermell noted that the federal money could be used to support Great Plates Delivered, though it didn’t get much traction or acknowledgement from the council.

Ultimately, the council decided to fund the program for another three months and write a strongly worded letter to the county Board of Supervisors, urging them to accept Pasadena’s restaurants into the program.

“We’re all part of this county, we all represent the same residents,” Gordo said. “To simply out of hand exclude (Pasadena restaurants) — particularly when the process is already in place — the best outcome would be for the county to simply agree to keep serving our residents with the system that’s in place, using our local restaurants, and not exclude Pasadena’s business community just because there’s an artificial political line in place.”

Thus far, the program has paid 21 of the restaurants about $100,000 — few received less, many received more — including Centerplate, the catering company for the city’s convention center.

It was one of two providers that belonged to a multibillion corporation.

The other, Panda Inn, dropped out of the program following a report from this newsgroup, after getting paid $13,713 and providing just 275 meals. It’s owned by the same parent company as fast food giant Panda Express.

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