By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce President Patt Lilly says it appears business is cooperating with the city shelter-in-place emergency order, though compliance is costly to the bottom line.
Lilly says the business community has embraced the need for only essential businesses to remain open.
“I’ve really not gotten any calls in recent days relative to should they be complying or are they complying, so on and so forth,” Lilly tells St. Joseph Post. “So, I would say, again, that I think we’re seeing good compliance in the community.”
Now, the entire state is under a shelter-in-place order after Gov. Mike Parson issued an emergency order Friday.
St. Joseph city officials say they are doing a lot of education to try to garner voluntary compliance. One Environmental Public Health Specialist went out Friday to visit with some businesses. The city reports he has issued some written notices for noncompliance, requesting the businesses either come into compliance or appeal the finding that they are not in compliance with the city emergency order.
Lilly says business owners understand the reason for the city order and are doing their best to ensure they can re-open when restrictions are lifted.
“I think some of those businesses likely will not survive,” Lilly says. “I don’t think certainly that’s unique to St. Joseph. I think you can say that about most communities across the country.”
Lilly says the Chamber is attempting to keep businesses connected with customers. He does hope the federal disaster aid approved by Congress might be enough to help some businesses survive.
Lilly says some businesses might not survive and need help to make it.
“The federal government certainly has put forward a significant relief package to help businesses and certainly that’ll be an opportunity for many of the businesses in St. Joseph to take advantage of and hopefully in the next days and weeks they’ll have that opportunity and we’ll see some benefit from that.”