The city’s Literati Book Store launched a GoFundMe campaign to avoid bankruptcy, and created a virtual site for its famous “public typewriter” so that customers could continue to leave anonymous written messages, a company tradition. (“Oh, how I wish for a coffee not made by my own hands,” wrote someone online in May.)
At State College, Pa., An estimated 65 percent of the community is made up of students on the main campus of Penn State, a local giant that enrolls 46,000 students, employs more than 17,000 non-students, and injects about $ 128 million a year in rural Center County.
The university has announced plans to reopen with double-occupancy dorms and at least half of its in-person classes, but it is not yet known how many students will return. Also in question is the future of Penn State football, a local economic hub that generated $ 100 million in 2018-19 just for college.
Local governments are also preparing. Amherst, Massachusetts, plans to vote this week on a proposal to increase annual water and sewer rates by an average of $ 100 per household, as a result of a precipitous drop in water use as students dropped out of Hampshire College, Amherst. College and University. from Massachusetts in that New England university town.
Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick said his city was preparing to cut its $ 70 million budget by about $ 14 million, and has suspended a quarter of its employees, including his assistant. He personally has taken a 10 percent pay cut. A resolution passed earlier this month asked the state to allow it to authorize forgiveness of general income for three months.
Unemployment in the Ithaca metropolitan area has soared to 10 percent from 3 percent before the pandemic. Sales tax revenue has collapsed, as about $ 4 million per week in student expenses has disappeared along with Cornell students, Myrick said. About two-thirds of the land in her jurisdiction is owned by the university, she said, and is therefore exempt from property tax.
“We are going to see Hoovervilles, or maybe Trump Towns, across the country,” said the mayor, a Democrat who frequently clashes with the Republican congressional delegation from his northern area of the state. “It is bad. It is really bad.”
