[SBU Board] Coronavirus discussion 2.0

[Tom Brown]

My thoughts are that staying open is totally a club decision and attending is totally a personal decision.  As to helping out the clubs, I think we need to wait and see what (if any) government help might be available to small businesses affected by Coronavirus, but I would not rule this out.

 

My guess is that we will have our own decisions to make on the NLM and Knockout before too long.

 

Tom

 

From: Sbuboard <sbuboard-bounces+tbrown1200=comcast.net at mailman.celestial.com> On Behalf Of Scott Chupack
Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 8:32 AM
To: Seattle ACBL Unit Board <sbuboard at mailman.celestial.com>
Subject: [SBU Board] Coronavirus discussion 2.0

 

So, I feel like things have changed a little bit since we met on Monday. A large number of Seattle tech firms have asked their Seattle employees to work from home, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Zulily, Facebook, Oracle. University of Washington has now closed to all but remote learning. A outbreak has happened in Santa Clara, CA and it has caused the Santa Clara Bridge Center to close indefinitely. A leading Venture Capitalist firm is calling this a "Black Swan" event and telling their companies to prepare for the worst.

I am a little unclear as our role as a Unit Board here. If our primary role is to run Sectional tournaments, we have no decisions to make in the next month or so. If our role is to provide leadership on bridge in the Seattle area, we may need to be proactive in protecting the community, our bridge players and their clubs, especially considering the higher risk of Covid-19 to older 

I haven't spoken to club managers personally, but I can imagine that it's possible that they are struggling with the decision whether to close their clubs temporarily for the good of the community and their members but also am aware of what it would do from a viability perspective of their business if they close. They may also not want to be the first to close and risk losing their customers going to the location that decides to stay open.

I would like to suggest that we quickly start assessing our options. Should we consider offer subsidies or loans to our clubs to offset the cost of shutting down their clubs? Our cash reserves gives us a special opportunity to help, at least for awhile. Would we just offer this to SBC and EBC who has the most overhead or all of the clubs based on average tables in a week? We can also use this as the impetus/justification to raise our sectional fees to $11 to offset this cost to the unit. Decisions are currently being made very quickly in the city. We may need to act before our next scheduled board meeting.

To be clear, I don't think we should tell them to close, but we can tell them what we can help out with if they need to close. I'm also aware that with all of this working from home, there are some that will really want to go to the club games to get out of the house, especially our under age 65 players, so it's a tricky call.

Thoughts?

 

https://paloaltobridge.org/games-and-other-unit-activities-suspended-at-the-bridge-center/?fbclid=IwAR0Pq_F2xcm0WOw9wFvGPNs3BD8TqdkDJ3wUOXRC1Q8C62qSOYeSjwNaO2Q#.XmCcwt3pFoM.facebook 

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/05/812173963/coronavirus-amazon-facebook-google-microsoft-urge-seattle-workers-to-stay-home 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-05/sequoia-capital-warns-startups-of-coronavirus-black-swan-event    

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