11.11.2020 FB Live Briefing.Business Compliance

The County of Santa Clara
November 11, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing: Why is Compliance so Important for our County’s Businesses?
10:00 AM

[Music]

Ricardo Romero Morales: good morning, everybody. thank you so much for tuning in. my name is Ricardo Romero Morales. i'm lead public information officer here at the emergency operations center in santa clara county this morning we have Beatrice Santiago, who is from the business compliance unit, who's going to talk to us about why compliance is so important. however, before we get started we're going to be removing our face coverings, so our asl interpreters can understand what we're saying. as you can see, there is an update of our cases appearing on your screen at this moment, and i do want to remind you that on Monday, Dr Cody and her health officers made an announcement of an uptick in cases here in Santa Clara County. as on Sunday, we have received 385 cases. that is a high number that we have been receiving since July. we also saw about a 10 percent increase in hospitalizations, so we're urging our community to continue to practice social distancing, wear their face coverings, and to remember that outdoors is safer than indoors. so moving into our segment, thank you. very good morning and thank you for being here with us.


Beatrice Santiago: good morning.

RRM: So thank you so much for being here and to talk to us about what compliance is and how it's important for our community, especially now that we're seeing our numbers continue to increase. So a few months ago the County of Santa Clara Board of Supervisors unanimously, adopted an ordinance authorizing fines for violations. However, we know that here in Santa Clara County, education is always our first approach. Could you share with us more information about the County's effort and the education approach that we're seeing

BS: Absolutely, Ricardo. As you mentioned, back in august the the unit was established, and from the get-go we knew the importance of an education first approach. It wasn't just about enforcement enforcement it was about outreach and compliance, as well. And so that is why the county truly believes in making resources accessible to all businesses, and you can see it. It's evident in all the effort so whether you're visiting our webpage where there's access to the order the mandatory directives and access to the state guidance. There's even access to how to report if maybe a outbreak has occurred or even one case has occurred at your facility, and there's other things there, like how to get tested ... so a wide variety of resources, and not only available in English, but also in other languages like Spanish and Vietnamese, so that we make efforts to reach as much of our community as possible. Even with our website, we also engage directly with businesses. Part of our branch is our business engagement team which actually will go out and visit businesses
on site they will make visits and give give information about how to operate in compliance, as well as providing a wide variety of tools. In addition to that if you haven't been visited if you haven't had a chance to see our website you could always pick up the phone and call our business call center where your questions can be answered about the order.

RRM: Great. Thank you so much. That is uh important information to to share with our community. So talk to us a little bit, or explain why uh compliance is so important, and what can community members do to help businesses stay in compliance?

SB: Absolutely. Compliance is is very important. Compliant, when a business operates in compliance, it lets the community know that they take their obligation seriously, that they are making every effort to to slow the spread of COVID, because the business has an obligation to not just create a safe environment for the customers coming into the into the business, but also an obligation to its workers, the community in general. Every action that the business takes will will help prevent the the spread of COVID. One way that the community could actually know if the business takes this this responsibility seriously, is if a social discipline protocol has been filed by the business. You could do things like when you visit the business look for that orange check mark. I know some people think "well that's just a check mark, that's not going to help me prevent COVID from spreading" but what it is, it's what the social distancing protocol stands for, it means that the business has taken time to really sit and plan out the methods that they're going to put in place to keep the community safe, their workers safe, and in addition to that, they also agree how they're going to educate their workers. So that's one important thing that community members could do in addition to that, think about it, when a business is open there's a lot that requires the community to to do its own part, so for example: wearing your face covering, keeping distance from members that are in your household, even doing things like providing your contact information if you're participating activities like indoor dining, or or maybe some gatherings. These are things that they could do, and I think above all, we just want people to know that if you're feeling symptoms, if you've engaged in risky behavior, stay home. Wait 'till you're feeling better, go get tested, and and do the right thing! It is up to all of us to do our part. And finally, if you perhaps visit a business or you're walking down the street and see a business that might not be in compliance and it's not doing its part, visit scccovidconcerns.org, and and share your concern, and our team will investigate it.

RRM: That is great. A lot of information that you're sharing with our community, and thank you for reminding them uh the fact that
it is important to continue to wear your face covering, maintain your social distance, and remember that outdoors is safer than indoors, and also talking about the the check mark that you're that you were sharing with us. Many of you might have been seeing the green check mark out in our community. However since October. It's a new check mark now it's an orange check mark, and we also understand that some of our businesses don't have a printer that prints in color, so for that, what we have done is we you you can look at the date on top of the check mark, and it should say "October", so that way you know that the business that you're walking into is in compliance, uh it's in compliance uh of the social distancing protocol, and we also have a database in where you can also check to see if the business that you're going to visit it's in compliance with all of the requirements from the Santa Clara County. Now uh thank you so much again for sharing all that information. Now let's talk about enforcement, and what happens when education efforts fail? What is the next step?

BS: so thank you for bringing that up. As you know, mentioned compliance is very important. We look for voluntary compliance but when compliance is you know making sure that you're operating correctly, but when we have repeat offenders, when we have willful violation, when we have businesses that are just simply refusing to comply and putting our community at risk, we take it very seriously, that's when we must implement enforcement action. Typically our response starts with the concern, so it could, we could respond to these concerns by contacting the business by a phone, maybe a site visit, and our officers will go out and inspect, and see if there's evidence of the violation, or if there's violation occurring. We prioritize according to risk, and when we're out there, if we see violation, we make sure the owners the business owners and operators know what needs to be done. Sometimes we might have to
issue a notice of violation. A notice of violation is a document that notices the business that their actions are not acceptable, their actions are putting the community at risk, and a violation has been documented, and there's a fee attached to that. And these fees can add up they range from $250 to $5000, depending on, once again, the risk, depending on willful violation, and they could also double if they continue to be in in violation, but the important thing to remember is once again, we want you guys to do the right things, and we give you the opportunity in most cases to correct. You could be offered a grace period of 24 to 72 hours, so if there's an effort to quickly correct, and and take away that risk that you're you're posing to the community, then then the fee could be waived. However in cases like super spreader events, where there's just no room for this error to occur, we take it very seriously, and these could be zero grace period, so an automatic fine will be assessed. We got to remember that that though some actions may seem small, these orders are in place for a reason. All of these these types of violations occur. They not only put the individual that might be at the business
at risk, they put into risk the close contacts, or the workers that go home to their families. They put into risk our entire community, and they could put into risk of slipping back into a more restrictive tier. We all want our businesses to stay open. We all want the community to be safe and we all want to continue to head in the right direction, so that is why we take all of these very seriously, and and we hope you do too.

RRM: thank you so much. That is great information you're providing us. Another thing that we want to remind people is that since since the pandemic started, we saw another uptick back in July-August, and ever since we saw a decrease in number of cases that we were seeing, but that was thank you thanks to all of you who are watching us right now, and thanks to all of the efforts and continuing
to being our eyes and ears on the ground and being able to provide, and give us a call and say "hey, you know, this business is not in compliance. I would like for for you all to take action," and we have. We have been taking every single call or complaint very seriously, and we do send our team out to to the streets, to these businesses to try to provide education. We also provide face coverings if they need them. We also provide signage around uh social distancing in case they need it.Now we we want to continue to to encourage you to be those eyes and ears out there, so Beatrice, where can they call? or how can they report a concern? BS: so if you
see a violation occurring, we want you to visit sccovidconcerns.org, there along with a wide variety of other resources, you could report a business that's in violation, and when I say business, this could mean any type of business that you know a retail store, a restaurant, and we even have a place on there to report concerns for schools, and even healthcare organizations that may be in violation of the testing order, so there's there's a wide variety there. One thing i would like to note though, is you know, you heard us speak today a little bit about how everyone needs to do their part, so we encourage you all to to proactively do your
part. Keep yourself educated, understand what the what the restrictions are, and figure out how to best comply with them. We don't want
you to wait until an enforcement officer has to show up at your place of business. Call the call center. It's there. Engage with with
our unit, and and make sure that you're doing the right thing. RRM: great thank you so much. And yes, just to remind you you can even call our business call centers uh or public health call center, where you can speak with anybody in English, Spanish or Vietnamese, uh if needed. So please, do your part. We're in this together. We know that you're all tired of wearing our face coverings, maintaining your social distance, washing your hands, being in isolation, keeping your quarantine, but thanks to those efforts, we're continuing to see progress. We are continuing to save lives! it could be that we're saving the life of a family member or one of your loved ones, so please do your part. Thank you so much, everybody for joining us this morning and thank you, Beatrice for being here.

BS: Thank you.

RRM: uh It is definitely another honor to have you here, and again if you have any questions feel free to visit our website. Please feel free to comment on our social media, and we will be making sure to address those comments. um Any last words that you want to say to our audience?

BS: uh just thank you for for doing your part, and we look forward to working with you guys, so we could get back to what we knew
as a normal life, before this pandemic.

RRM: great thank you so much.Everybody and don't forget to tune in on Friday and Wednesdays for Facebook Live. Thank you and stay safe!