The Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce (WVCC) wants to say, “Thank You!” to our community for pulling together and supporting one another in this time of great trial. We want to recognize the enormous efforts being putting in to keep our community safe, healthy, and prosperous.
We have leaned on our healthcare and banking professionals more than ever during this crisis. We have relied on our healthcare professionals to keep our people strong, our banking professionals to keep our businesses strong, and our businesses to keep our community strong. We want to thank these two important industries for going above and beyond for our community during these unprecedented times.
When Congress passed the CARES Act, which provided the Payment Protection Program to help businesses receive the financial assistance they desperately need after being abruptly closed, the responsibility to implement that program successfully fell on our local banking community. The WVCC is grateful to our banks and their teams of lenders who went into overdrive to get our local businesses access to this program. Our bankers were put in an impossible position to help their customers compete for a finite resource. Many needed to implement new software, learn a new system, become experts in a new lending program literally overnight, and create a mechanism to take, process, and successfully submit loans into a system that in the past year did $30 million nationwide and in less than two weeks was going to do $350 Billion nationwide.
Every team at each of our participating banks has worked long hours to secure money for our local businesses to keep them running. As we look at other communities our size across the nation, we are seeing that many did not get access to the amount of help that we were able to secure. Although the herculean efforts by our lenders left some still without funding, we are forever grateful for the millions of dollars they have infused our local economy within a matter of weeks.
Similarly, our healthcare professionals have been thrusted into an impossible battle to keep our community healthy and safe, while experiencing significant financial strain. The WVCC extends a special thank you to our Respiratory Therapists, Nurses, CNAs, Technicians, Housekeeping, Infection Control Teams, Admitting Representatives, Pharmacists, Doctors, Translators and all the leadership teams at each of our medical and long-term care facilities. The sacrifices being made to provide healthcare service, outreach, and leadership to our community is admirable.
It is inspiring to see our business community come together in this time of great uncertainty. We stand a fighting chance for recovery because of the sacrifices being made by these two critical industries in our community. On behalf of the entire business community, we are deeply grateful.
Printed courtesy of www.wenatchee.org/ – Contact the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce for more information.
137 North Wenatchee Avenue, Wenatchee, WA 98801 – (509) 662-2116 – info@wenatchee.org