CAPITOLA >> More than 60 local residents piled into the community room at Capitola City Hall on Tuesday night to glean updates and ask questions about ongoing recovery efforts from this winter’s brutal storm season.

The roundtable meeting, convened by 19th District U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, was open to all district residents but mostly focused on issues in Capitola, which was brutalized during a heavy storm surge in January. Panetta hosted two roundtables in the San Lorenzo Valley earlier this year, he said.

The discussion featured speakers from multiple local, statewide and federal agencies who shared brief updates and solicited feedback for how to improve the recovery process when future disasters strike.

“We’re going to have another storm; we’re going to have another extreme weather event,” said Panetta. “I’m obviously proud of what happened in regards to the response, but I also know it wasn’t perfect … and that’s where we can get better.”

As the federal representative for most North and Mid-Santa Cruz County regions along with the coastline adjacent to Watsonville, Panetta played an instrumental role in securing two major disaster declarations from President Joe Biden after widespread damage from a series of atmospheric river storms this winter.

But several business owners along Capitola’s esplanade said that they are yet to receive the financial assistance those declarations unlocked.

Dominick King, the owner of My Thai Beach restaurant, said the U.S. Small Business Administration, a recovery partner of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has rejected his application twice and that he has yet to receive any federal assistance for the estimated $120,000 in damages he suffered during the storms.

The first he attributed to the usage of improper application verbiage, but the second was denied because of income concerns. The problem is that the numbers were pulled from the previous year’s tax data when the COVID-19 pandemic was still significantly hampering customer turnout.

“It’s exhausting to keep going through that stuff and it’s a waste of time if it doesn’t go anywhere,” King told the Sentinel Wednesday. “But we’ll do it because we need the money.”

Similarly, Patrick Lynn, owner of Bay Bar and Grill which has still not reopened, said his SBA application was kicked back four times.

“We’re talking months of time at a time when we’re not getting paid, our income is zero and we’re draining our savings if we have any,” said Lynn. “The tick-tacky little things; it’s soul-crushing at a time when we need help.”

Chuck Hammers is the owner of the Pizza My Heart restaurant chain and the building along the esplanade where three other impacted businesses are located. Hammers thanked Panetta for being one of the first representatives to visit the area in January and also took the opportunity to share a policy request.

He said the FEMA-backed flood insurance policy currently caps at $500,000 per building, even if the building is home to multiple businesses.

“As climate change goes on, it’s only going to get worse and construction costs are only going to go up,” Hammers told the Sentinel Wednesday. He said he voiced this concern to Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom when they visited the city earlier this year and both said they were unaware of the issue. Newsom pledged to look into it, but Hammers said he has yet to hear back.

Mary Anne Bradfield, an SBA spokesperson, reiterated comments from Panetta and others that the feedback is tough to hear but necessary for the agencies to improve their processes.

“Our goal is to make it affordable (for the businesses),” Bradfield told the Sentinel Wednesday. “We want them to make the payments; we don’t want them to default and we want them to get up and running so everything works, the whole economy works.”

According to Bradfield, the SBA has distributed $1 million in recovery loans stemming from the pair of disasters in the city of Capitola alone as well as $22 million across the county as a whole.

She said while the deadline to apply for individual or homeowner’s assistance from the SBA has passed for the first disaster event from Dec. 27 to Jan. 31, the window to apply for economic injury loans for small businesses is open until Oct. 16.

For the second storm event period ranging from Feb. 21 to July 10, the deadline to apply for assistance from physical damages sustained by individual homeowners, renters and businesses of all sizes has been extended to Sept. 16. The deadline for economic injury loans targeted to small businesses specifically is Jan. 3, 2024, for the second event.

Bradfield said those in need of assistance can email the SBA at disastercustomerservice@sba.gov or call 800-659-2955.

Likewise, Panetta encouraged all in the audience to contact his office if they need help navigating the process, adding that when it comes to bureaucracies, persistence is key and “you can’t let up.”

The city of Capitola applied for about $2.5 million in FEMA reimbursements from this winter’s storms, spanning about 20 projects, according to Capitola Mayor Margaux Keiser, who lauded the community for rallying together in the storm’s aftermath and borrowed a phrase from Biden to describe the mindset going forward.

“We’ll build it back and we’ll build it back better,” said Keiser. “I think that is the only way we can push forward and have confidence in doing so as a community.”