The Pandemic is Personal: Sedro-Woolley’s Germaine Kornegay on small town resilience

Editor’s note: Wel­come to The Pan­dem­ic is Per­son­al, a week­ly series focus­ing on on how the nov­el coro­n­avirus (SARS-CoV­‑2) is affect­ing the every­day lives of peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west. We hope to enlight­en you and reflect on what you and oth­ers are address­ing as this pan­dem­ic runs its course. If you have a sto­ry to tell, please feel free to con­tact us.

In this install­ment, we’ll hear from Ger­maine Korne­gay. Orig­i­nal­ly from Philadel­phia, Ger­maine has been a small busi­ness own­er for twen­ty-four years and a mem­ber of the Sedro-Wool­ley City Coun­cil since 2014. She has been a Domes­tic Vio­lence and Sex­u­al Assault Advo­cate for Skag­it Coun­ty, an advo­cate at the Oasis Teen Shel­ter, a coun­selor at the local Boys and Girls Club, and a “gen­tle­la­dy farmer” who has raised chick­ens for ten years.

In Wash­ing­ton State’s Skag­it Coun­ty, where the pop­u­la­tion is just over 129,000, we’ve recent­ly opened up our first dri­ve-through test­ing site.

Our Skag­it Coun­ty Pub­lic Health Depart­ment has been keep­ing us updat­ed on cas­es, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths. We had a local choir group who met after a rehearsal and twen­ty days lat­er, two were dead and twen­ty-eight of forty-five present test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. They took all of the pre­cau­tions known at the time, but were unaware of the virus spread­ing through droplets in the air.

It’s grim, but our com­mu­ni­ty is resilient. I learned that after the Cas­cade Mall shoot­ing four years ago. Here in Skag­it Coun­ty, we are a tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty of small towns, so our local net­work helps one anoth­er in so many ways.

Our prin­ci­pal coun­ty food bank, Help­ing Hands in Sedro-Wool­ley, is our pride and joy. Help­ing Hands typ­i­cal­ly sup­plies oth­er local food banks through­out Skag­it Coun­ty, but they are now all closed, bring­ing all clients in the area to Help­ing Hands.

With the new phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing require­ments and a dou­bling of nor­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion require­ments placed on Help­ing Hands, we’ve need­ed more volunteers.

We’ve also had to replace some of our usu­al vol­un­teers as well, who have had to stay home as they are among our most vulnerable.

I per­son­al­ly upped my vol­un­teer hours until the Nation­al Guard came in to help. We are so grate­ful for their pres­ence – and some of the Guards­men and Guardswomen are from Sedro-Woolley.

Local farm­ers are kick­ing in and folks like myself are rais­ing mon­ey. I raised over $1,000 through my birth­day event last month for Help­ing Hands (thank you to those able to give!) and it’s not too late if you would like to con­tribute.

The city has made it pos­si­ble for employ­ees to work from home when­ev­er fea­si­ble. Our police and fire depart­ments are, like most these days, stretched thin.

Mask wear­ing and sham­ing is a strange new phenomenon. 

Some here don’t believe in sci­ence when it dis­agrees with a belief, and it’s becom­ing as divi­sive as every­thing else these days. 

An upriv­er Face­book group had to remove a post where a woman point­ed out a group at a busi­ness estab­lish­ment that were not wear­ing masks. 

Dis­turbing­ly, at essen­tial busi­ness­es such as gro­cery stores, it was rare to see any­one oth­er than the work­ers (myself and a cou­ple oth­ers) wear­ing a mask — a huge risk to the essen­tial work­ers. But at the gar­den cen­ters that are open, every­one was wear­ing one. (I actu­al­ly did­n’t expect to see them open the first time I went a gar­den cen­ter since the out­break of the virus, and left mine in the car at home. Of course, all my neigh­bors were there with theirs on. Oops.) 

I am work­ing to get the Gov­er­nor to see pet groom­ing, espe­cial­ly with the upcom­ing warm months and its accom­pa­ny­ing flea sea­son, as essential. 

After a dis­cus­sion with my state sen­a­tor, I’ve been try­ing to form an alliance with oth­er groom­ing busi­ness­es in the area to put for­ward sim­i­lar requests with good rea­son­ing behind the idea and work­able plans on how to min­i­mize issues. 

Some, instead, called my land­lord to ensure I wasn’t groom­ing, which was dis­ap­point­ing. There is enough busi­ness for us all, and I present­ly have a wait­ing list of 150+ dogs as a one-woman shop with tem­per­a­tures some days trend­ing toward 80 F (and some­times even inch­ing just beyond). I am going to be over­whelmed when I return to my busi­ness. Feast or famine!

The local thrift shop will soon be over­whelmed with my spring clean­ing dona­tions. Most peo­ple I know local­ly are in self quar­an­tine, so I spend time get­ting my gar­den togeth­er, cook­ing and call­ing friends while I walk my adopt­ed Rot­tweil­er, Trey. Thank­ful­ly, I adopt­ed Trey from Seat­tle Pure­bred Dog Res­cue right before the news of the virus hit us.

Skag­it Coun­ty will lose tons of rev­enue this year with­out tourism.

It’s a $65 mil­lion a year busi­ness here. More than a mil­lion peo­ple come to see mil­lions of tulips in bloom every year through the Skag­it Tulip Fes­ti­val and the dis­play gar­den tours at Tulip Town and Roozen­Gaarde — but not this one.

(They are doing vir­tu­al tours and bulbs can be ordered.)

For tax rev­enue, Sedro Wool­ley counts heav­i­ly on small busi­ness­es and they in turn rely on tourism, espe­cial­ly this time of year with such events as Wood­fest, Blast from the Past and the Help­ing Hands Food Bank Beer Fes­ti­val. We will lose a sub­stan­tial amount of busi­ness from tourism this year.

The mea­ger lev­els of incom­ing tax rev­enue we’re see­ing could lead to us tem­porar­i­ly cut­ting pur­chas­es and oth­er expens­es from our city bud­get. We will also have a lot of mak­ing up to do, but a longer way to go, than larg­er cities.

As far as our local busi­ness­es go, many were oper­at­ing on tight bud­gets already, as expect­ed in a small town. At least a few will not be able to return, unfor­tu­nate­ly. The com­mu­ni­ty is doing all it can to sup­port them, and our local restau­rants are over­whelmed with take­out orders. I try to sup­port them as well, but many are clos­ing ear­ly in the day as they run out of supplies.

Being a small com­mu­ni­ty with 12,000 res­i­dents, we real­ly can­not afford to lose a sin­gle busi­ness. I hope that most of them can hold on until we get to the oth­er side of this. I see the light at the end of the tun­nel. When going through hell, it’s best to keep going, as Win­ston Churchill once quipped.