East Houston News

BAYTOWN – The Baytown West Chambers County Economic Development Foundation is working with local leaders to try to guide community businesses through the economic situation created by COVID-19 shutdowns.

B.J. Simon, associate executive director of the foundation, said the situation is somewhat mitigated locally because most of the dominant industries in the area are on the federal list of critical infrastructure sectors, according to the Baytown Sun.

So, while workers may have to work from home or navigate the shelter-in-place orders imposed by other counties where they live, many at least have jobs.

For other businesses, the handling the crisis comes down to planning, tightening belts and looking for creative solutions.

“Business continues,” Simon said. “People are planning because they know that there will be technological, sociological and psychological interventions that at some point are going to stabilize this.”

Still, there are other compounding factors hitting at the same time as the COVID-19 crisis, he acknowledged.

The IPSCO facility in Chambers County recently announced layoffs, but Simon said that, as a business in the energy sector, they were already hurting from the ongoing conflict between Russia and Saudi Arabia that was driving down oil prices.

“Nobody could have imagined the impact of a novel coronavirus,” he said. “It’s a squeeze.”

For Baytown itself, the government is joining businesses in revenue concerns, Simon said. The city runs on sales tax revenue, and if no one is buying anything, they won’t be bringing in any money to run the local government either.

While larger companies may fair the storm, small businesses are already going under, and the unemployment in one sector quickly sends shockwaves through others.

For now, though, people in all corners are making do and just trying to keep operations going.

Simon said there is some hope that the federal stimulus checks that started arriving the week of April 14 will help with that.