Summit County government can’t close, in the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19. But like many private operations, the county is scrambling to figure how it will operate.
The questions range from their meeting schedule in the next few weeks—to major goals over the next couple of years.
County Manager Tom Fisher said their most immediate tasks the past few days were providing information after the Public Health Order, and keeping track of the self-isolated COVID-19 cases in the county
The Summit County Council meeting for this week has been canceled. But Fisher said they probably will meet next week, and will resume the schedule for their Planning Commissions.
“We just wanted to get through the first few days of this, understanding how we’re operating as a county in order to support this effort, see how many employees we still have in the office and working from home—all that kind of stuff, plus make sure that our technology works correctly in order to hold a proper public hearing, public meeting, so that we don’t –so that we offer the most folks the opportunity to participate in our meetings.’
Fisher said he’d prefer not to have the Council and other county leaders meeting together—or at least not a lot of them. Many of that group, he noted, are in the age group considered vulnerable for the virus.
And he certainly doesn’t want a large public crowd. He said he’s meeting with their staff to plan the meetings.
“So we’re wrestling with that problem. We put that to our staff to come up with solutions. And we’re going to be testing some of those solutions before we put agendas out. (Leslie) Something like the “zoom-dot-com” (Fisher) It could be very much like that. But I wanna make sure that we can also broadcast this out to the community, that we have a very useful way for community members to submit comments and have those put into the record the proper way and considered.”
He said the county staff is working from home as much as possible. But he estimated that a half to three-quarters of what they do requires some presence from a staffer—notably, law enforcement and the landfill operation.
The Health Department has to be on hand. But the Health offices in Kamas and Coalville are mostly there for family planning services.
“The Coalville office itself, we have some administrative staff there to deal with any folks that are walking in for services. Most of our services have moved to either on-line or by phone or by appointment. The Recorder’s office is open, the Assessor’s office is open. I mean, all the elective offices are open, but trying to limit both employees being in the office and just regular walk-in traffic. And of course we have to still service the county government. So IT is working, Personnel is working.”
The Public Health Order was put in place on March 15th. Legally, it can be appealed within 10 days after that.
Fisher said they did see one appeal briefly. A business owner said that his operation was not just a restaurant, but a grocery store. Fisher said the owner worked out the issue with county staff and is still operating but not gathering a crowd.
In the meantime, the county is postponing some major tasks on its plate. But Fisher said they’re still working to plan their garbage service, given that the current contract is due to run out in 2022.
“I think the contract part is one of those areas where we have to keep going, and find a way to continue that process. We as management are looking through our whole work plan right now because things are gonna get delayed. There are certain items that we’re gonna have to put off and not work on this year because of this, until we understand kinda what the new Normal is, and how long that Normal is gonna last.”
The county and Park City went to their spring bus schedule—in part because of a shortfall in their transit staff.
Health officials have been calling for social separation, which would seem to be an argument against riding the transit system. Despite that, Fisher said there are still segments of the public that need bus service.
“The most vulnerable in our community still need to seek health care. We need to be able to—those that are still working and count on public transportation to get to work, we still need to do that. From the transit-system perspective, they have upped their protocols on cleaning. And that’s not just the buses, it’s also monitoring their staff for symptoms, as well as making sure that the transit centers themselves are cleaned and properly noticed for social distancing. It takes a Herculean effort to do all that.”
Fisher said that, finally, they’re working to respond to a new landscape that appeared very quickly.
“We gotta continue to look six months, one year, two years out in the future, and start planning for that, because it’s going to be different than what we thought three weeks ago.”
Summit County Manager Tom Fisher.
