COVID-19: Pivoting Public Services During a Pandemic

As the enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic hit this spring, the entire community – parents, seniors, workers, business owners, renters, recent immigrants – looked to the County of San Mateo for public services and leadership.

The County is a large and diverse organization with 5,500 employees across 20 departments. Those employees provide a wide range of services, from protecting public health to filing potholes, running elections to answering 911 calls. The County also contracts with community-based organizations that house the homeless, feed families barely making ends meet and train the unemployed for new careers, among dozens of other services.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges: How to continue to deliver vital services while guarding against the coronavirus? What new services will be needed?

Managers in programs funded by Measure K responded to the outbreak by supporting employees as they worked at home and shifting service delivery to online models whenever possible.

And as the economy struggled, the Board of Supervisors in March allocated $3 million in Measure K funds as emergency relief for individuals, families, nonprofit organizations and small businesses. 

The Board, also in response to the pandemic, has allocated additional Measure K funds to schools in underserved areas of the county, to assist nonprofit agencies serving the most vulnerable residents and in other targeted areas. As the 2020-21 fiscal year began, the Board approved relief and economic recovery efforts with Measure K funds for recent immigrants, homeless families and other segments of the population most in need.