In the News

Congressman French Hill meets with Searcy leaders on reopenings, COVID-19

06/04/2020
The Searcy Daily Citizen

About a dozen Searcy business and community leaders met with Congressman French Hill on Wednesday and discussed reopenings in light of COVID-19.

Hill, a Republican representing the 2nd District of Arkansas, went around the room at Think Idea Studio and let each person give their perspectives on how the virus related to each of their areas in White County. He said in this very early stage of things getting opened back up in the state, he wanted to hear from them on a “grassroots level” in Searcy and the county.

First, he updated those in attendance on where things currently stand nationally.

“Literally 40,000 businesses here in Arkansas have gotten a PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan,” Hill said, also mentioning the 40 million jobless claims since March in the United States and calling it a “staggering number.” Hill said about 87 percent of these claims are coming from those “who have been furloughed, classifying themselves as working fewer hours.”

He said he thinks “leisure driving travel“ will come back before “business meeting travel.” Hotel occupancies have bottomed out, he said, but they are climbing again and the same is true for air travel.

“Monday, about 300,000 Americans flew, that’s the good news; the bottom was about 71,000,” Hill said. “The bad news is on a typical day in America, 2 million people fly. So, we have a long way to go.”

Living with “the virus,” including wearing a mask in a crowd and practicing social distancing, is something Hill said citizens are going to have to do.

“We are going to have to accommodate working around this virus and that is going to be a challenge,” he said.

If everyone knew March 1 what is known now, Hill said, “we probably would have done a few things differently.”

When making decisions concerning openings and closings, White County Judge Michael Lincoln told Hill that he wishes that instead of decisions being made for the “whole state,” individual counties would be looked at “because there are some counties in Arkansas that still don’t have a case (of COVID-19).”

Searcy Mayor Kyle Osborne said the question he is asked more than any other one is concerning why the barbershops and nail salons were ordered closed and restaurants were closed to dine in when Walmart, Lowe’s and “quickie marts” were packed with people.

Reynie Rutledge, chairman of First Security Bank, told Hill that from an economic standpoint, Gov. Asa Hutchinson “did a fantastic job not closing down Arkansas like all the states around us ... we got the numbers (COVID-19 cases) going up right now in northwest Arkansas, but to me that has nothing to do with being closed down or not closed down.”

“As a rule in Arkansas, things have kept going pretty well and the week we’re in right now with college not being in, the traffic couldn’t be any more than it is,” Rutledge said. “The traffic in the last week has picked up quite a bit. I feel better than I did in late March.”

Harding University took “about a 6.3 million dollar hit” by having to shut down early because of COVID-19, President Dr. Bruce McLarty said. However, with Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act money the university received and “basically” freezing its spending for the rest of the fiscal year, its 1,000 employees were guaranteed their jobs through the end of June which is the end of the fiscal year.

“Right now, we think we will finish this fiscal year, breaking even,” McLarty said.

On March 6, when the university went on spring break, McLarty said, “we were all still shaking hands. A week later, we told our kids not to come back after spring break and it has all changed that quickly.”

McLarty said one of the blessings for the university has been that it gets “two infusions of cash each year” when tuition money comes in.

“When that’s in the bank, it’s at the bank. So when this happened midpoint in a semester, most of our infusion of cash has already come in,” he said. “We froze our expenses. We waited on the $1.6 [million] from the CARES Act.”

McLarty explained that that money went directly to the students for expenses they had, such as buying a computer to go online for the rest of the semester and travel.

In regard to enrollment for the fall, McLarty said the university was set to be up 60 students in it freshman class from last year. He said probably 80 percent of the decisions for fall will be made next month. McClarty said.

Amy Burton, executive director of Main Street Searcy, told Hill that the PPP “bought us a couple of months that got us into a potential donor for the next couple of months.”

“We did cancel our festival [Get Down Downtown], which brings in about 30,000 people,” she said. “I didn’t truly, even myself, realize the impact until I started having to make the phone calls to the sound crew, the stage crew, the light crew. I spend over a thousand dollars for Porta-Potties for a day and a half event.”

Burton said Main Street Searcy is OK right now but she is a little worried about “long term.”

Osborne said with the COVID-19 cases in some areas on the rise, it wouldn’t surprise him if “we had to go through all of this [the COVID-19 protocols] again. I hope not.”

Unity Health-White County Medical Center President and Chief Executive Officer Steven Webb said testing for COVID-19 has been a “game-changer.”

“At first, we just didn’t have access to testing,” Webb said. “Private labs were taking 72-96 hours to get results and the health department was at 48 hours. Everybody that came in, we assumed they were COVID and we went through a lot of our protective equipment, so it was kind of a mess because we didn’t know. Now that the testing is more available, we have 4,000 tests in our clinic.”

Webb said Unity Health now can get COVID-19 results in 17 minutes.

“We thought in March we were going to have 12,000 admissions in the state of Arkansas; we only have 5,000 hospital beds,” he said. “We spent 1.3 million dollars preparing for COVID. We are appreciative of the health and human services funds we received, without those we would have lost five million dollars, but they took the sting out of it.”

Since opening in 1967, Webb said Unity Health hasn’t had a layoff and wants to take care of their associates. “What happens in June, since we have April and May payments, could be a different story,” he said.

Webb said the hospital system has reopened for elective surgeries being as safe as it can following all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Those surgeries were not being done because of COVID-19 directives.

“Surgeries were down 60 percent in March and April,” Webb said. “Clinics were down 50 percent through April and 20 percent in May.”

As far as telehealth visits, Webb said before COVID-19 Unity Health did about 50 a month, but in April it did over 2,500 telehealth visits.

“It changed the ways we deliver care,” Webb said. The Psych Program, according to Webb, never went below 90 percent capacity because therapy and sessions were switched over to FaceTime.

Searcy School District Superintendent Diane Barrett said she is hoping the district will be getting answers soon on back-to-school plans for the fall. She said the Arkansas Department of Education is working to get districts some information in the next few days.

“We were fortunate that we had enough technology to supply the devices that were needed,” Barrett said, regarding students using electronic means to do their lessons after schools were closed in March.

Internet access is a problem, though, Barrett said.

“We have so many that do not have internet, whether it’s a financial reason or whether it’s just not available in that area,” she said. “We have had teachers delivering lessons because the access (to the internet) was spotty wherever they lived.”

Looking at different ways to deliver education and being prepared to do that are things the district are now looking at for the fall, Barrett said.

Concerning social distancing if school returns, Barrett used an example of a 71-passenger bus that could only carry about eight students at a time and that “would be very difficult.”

Barrett said other indications the district is getting, and she is not sure if these are definite, would be for all students 10 and over to wear a mask. There would be a possibility that the students may have to eat lunch in their classrooms too for social distancing purposes.

The internet access is a main concern, Barrett reiterated, mentioning monthly subscriptions to internet for households that do not have it. She mentioned the cost concerns of these subscriptions.

Hill said after hearing from the community and business leaders that he was encouraged and is looking for ways to fill the gaps.