SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) – Businesses across the country are reeling from the impact of COVID-19. There is the virus, and then the economic crisis that follows it. While no one knows when the situation will all end, San Francisco is about to launch its recovery effort.

“Rather than wait until the pandemic is over, why don’t we start thinking ahead,” asks San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee.

In partnership with the Mayor London Breed, Supervisor Yee has convened an economic recovery task force. To illustrate what he hopes to accomplish, Yee has sketched out a new twist on the now familiar curve.

“If we plan, the hope is that we recover quicker,” he says pointing to his sketched out recovery curves. “This is the top curve.”

The first part of that would be help for city businesses large and small. Many of which were struggling before the pandemic.

“I’m a hairdresser and I’m a single mom,” says Amanda Anderson of San Francisco. “It’s a struggle to figure out how I’m going to be paying for rent next month.”

Anderson says any help would be wonderful, but she wonders about how far it will go.

“How much of a difference it’ll make,” she says. “It’ll make a difference. But will it cover the amount for rent because San Francisco is as expensive as it is?”

The task force is also worried about another balance sheet.

“We anticipate a $1.1 to $1.7 billion budget deficit over the next two years,” Mayor Breed said of the city’s finances, on Friday.

The city hopes an aggressive rescue plan for businesses and workers will produce a better recovery curve, in turn saving the city’s finances. Yee even sees it as an opportunity to modernize the city’s notorious bureaucracy.

“And what can we do, sort of, long-term,” Yee asks. “That’s what we need to start thinking about, not wait until we’re out of the pandemic.”