ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Acknowledging that Florida's economic woes due to the coronavirus pandemic might not have bottomed out yet, a number of Florida public officials addressed the state's hoped-for recovery during a webinar Thursday.

More than 173,000 Floridians filed for unemployment this week, the U.S. Dept. of Labor reported on Thursday. That’s down from the nearly 260,000 Floridians who filed for unemployment last week.

“Let’s be candid – a lot of those small businesses that we talked about are not going to re-open,” said Palm Harbor House Republican Chris Sprowls during the webinar. “There are going to be a lot of businesses in the state of Florida who will not be financially able to re-open their doors, and that’s going to create a strain on the economy.” 

The webinar on re-opening Florida’s economy that was sponsored by the Orlando-based Florida Family Policy Council on Thursday. Education Chancellor Eric Hall and Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz also took part in the discussion. 

State leaders like Senate President Bill Galvano have maintained that the combination of reserves and stimulus money passed by Congress in the CARES Act might be enough to avoid a financial crisis in the Sunshine State.

Sprowls, however, acknowledged that budget cuts are likely, but he also expressed hope that Florida will emerge quicker from its economic malaise than other states because of its fiscal management and natural and man-made attractions.

“I believe Florida came into this pandemic in a better fiscal position than the vast majority of our state counterparts throughout the nation,” he said. “I don’t think people come out of the pandemic and say to themselves, ‘you know, I’m going to Michigan to take a vacation,' right? They’re going to Clearwater Beach. They’re going to Miami.”

Addressing the pandemic's toll on mental health, child education

Not all the costs to Floridians by social distancing and sheltering in place has been financial.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted last month revealed that nearly half (45 percent) of adults across the U.S. say that worry and stress related to the pandemic has affected their mental health.

Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz said that he recently lost a friend to suicide. 

“This is what happens when you get depressed and despondent and you don’t talk to someone else," he said."And we have mental health problems rising, we have suicide rates rising, and that’s the pressure backwards to get the economy back open because people live purposefully. Or not.”

Eric Hall, Chancellor for innovation at the Florida Department of Education, was asked by moderator John Stemberger about the possibilities of Florida’s K-12 system opening up for any summer programs. Hall didn’t dismiss the possibility.

“We’re actually surveying them right now to get a good read on how programs out there want to operate in the summer, what does that look like?” Hall said. “We’re hopeful because we know part of re-opening the economy is being able to have families know that they’ve got dependable child care and their children are taken care of in these programs, and also bridging some of the learning loss that we’re going to be concerned about right now at this point in time.”