After more than a year of pandemic, Summit County is gradually reopening its buildings to in-person public services.
During Tuesday night’s meeting of the Council of Governments, County Manager Tom Fisher reported that county buildings are opening up. Staffers are filtering back in, though they are talking with their directors about whether they will work in person, remotely or some combination of the two going forward.
Fisher said they’ve decided to take a gradual approach.
“We’re really taking kind of a slow-roll approach to this and not charging headlong into reopening, mostly because we still have the vaccination process going on,” he said. “And we have a lot of staff dedicated to that, not only from the Health Department, but really from all over our government that are playing different roles, and that everything from Facilities to IT to Human Resources and all that kind of support stuff. Since we have that reallocation of human resource towards that effort, it means we have to be more measured in how we open other things.”
Fisher said the county libraries will open May 3 with limited in-person and curbside services. Furthermore, on the week of May 10, the senior centers plan to resume congregate meals with limited attendance and social distancing.
The county’s goals remain flexible in case unforeseen problems come up.
“It could be a staffing reason,” Fisher said. “It could be something that changes in how the staff is looking at those services, or if anything changes with case rates, or anything like that that we’re not expecting at this point.”
Fisher added that the county is confident it can meet its vaccination goals at the current rate.
