Longmont City Council Work Session – March 25, 2020

To listen to the meeting alongside a transcript, please visit: https://otter.ai/s/RMIL2v8rRVyiAlcMaLHJIg

0:02
This I don’t see Tim is Tim around.

0:05
Yep. Tim’s there

0:08
in Bali and Joan Kim is here, but I don’t see everybody all the time either. I see you. But hey, I see Marsha. So give me a call afterwards. I see your ride this afternoon. I was you want to write some more, give me a call. Okay, we’ll do

0:27
Sergio. Live.

0:35
All right, Mayor Council. We are live on our first electronic council meeting. I think this as we work through this practice for next Tuesday. Mary, do you want to kick us off

0:50
and then I’ll go, there we go. So my question is, do we is this an actual meeting? Meaning do we have to do the pledge and that kind

0:57
of stuff?

0:58
No, this is like The work sessions that we did on

1:02
Alright, let’s go ahead. Yes. All right, let’s just go ahead and do roll call then. Here.

1:11
We don’t get a call roll call. No.

1:15
Just Just Just go ahead. Tim, are you there?

1:20
Yes, yes, I’m here. Marsha. You they’re

1:24
here I am. Indeed. You are. Paul. Polly, you there?

1:29
Yes, I am. Joanie there. You don’t

1:36
hear? Okay. Cool. Aaron. President, Sierra.

1:44
I see Aaron so Susie, their

1:48
present mayor.

1:50
All right, cool. Then we got Eugene.

1:56
Eugene is

1:57
present mayor, Eugene Merrick. Cool.

2:00
Both ICU Harold and then we have Karen and we have Kathy Feller. And who else is with us?

2:08
Dan even Jim golden

2:12
Elizabeth random males

2:15
and Karen rodina. We have longevity much

2:20
at Walmart public media, and we have Susan Wallach streaming in cities.

2:30
We’re here for an update. Why don’t you do that?

2:34
All right. We also have Jeff sack. He is the Boulder County Department of Health director and just gonna give an update on the order. What I wanted to start off with is if everyone can mute, what we found is I’ve been to organization. If you don’t mute, we start picking up all sorts of feedback into the system. So if everyone could mute, I can control that from here as well. If you have problems doing it, just let me know. But I wanted to start off with a little bit of counsel today is really answering some of the questions that we’re hearing from the community. And in providing some information in terms of how we operate what we do to give you counsel, a little bit of background on these types of situations, really the key to everything that we do as an organization. It’s really about how we prepare and how we set up structure for response for any types of situations. We’re really what we consider ourselves to be an all hazard community. And what that means is, is we have any number we have our emergency management plan, and that consists of different annexes, and based on the type of app we use those to basically guide our response. Nothing’s ever perfect. The best example that I would give to you in terms of preparedness Is that some of the work that we’ve been doing on our infrastructure pieces is coming into this, we actually had 700 VPN licenses and approximately 50 Citrix license. And what that means is we were actually able to spend very quickly to allow people to work from home. And so at this point, we have exceeded the governor’s order in terms of the number of people working from home. I have that information back there. I can give you those numbers specifically if you want to, but I can tell you today that we are complying with that order, and we’re moving through it. The one thing I will say is, we have a lot of experience within the organization in dealing with this. And, you know, using me as an example, whether depending on where you’re coming from whether fortunately, or unfortunately, we’ve all been through a number of issues. At this point, each and every one of us are really relying on that experience as we can Because what I will tell you in the community is it is different, and it is constantly evolving. The example that I’ve given to folks is every day seems like the first day of the flood, because things are always changing. I want to start off by saying some stuff to the council in the community that I think we all need to keep in mind as we’re having this conversation and really always keep it at the top of our list. One, we know unequivocally that people are afraid they’re afraid as to whether or not they will get the virus what that means to their families. And it just the overall impact on friends family, related to the virus itself to we’re asking via the order that was issued today, people to stay at home. And we know and I know you all know that this is going to be a challenge. We as, as humans, like to get together, and we know that this is going to create different situations and different responses. And we also know that mental health is going to be an important, ongoing conversation as we move through this. We also know this fall, small business owners are having to deal with not only the issue of stay at home order, but also really sit back and go. What does that mean for me as a small business owner, am I going to be able to continue? Am I going to have to close Am I going to have to lay people off and that’s an additional strain. And then finally, we are then we also know that individuals who work for these companies are having the same conversation. Some people have lost their jobs, some people are afraid they will lose their jobs. And I want to sit that as a framework as we talked about this because I think it’s really important for the community. For the council to understand that we are hearing this, we are also hearing it from members of our organization. And that is always at the forefront of our mind as we’re moving through these situations. There are many different things in play, and we have many different folks trying to do the best they can.

7:23
The one thing I will say is this issue continues to change on a daily basis. For example, I know we got started a little late, but we found out at 230, that we think the governor is going to have a press conference at four. So I think it’s important for all of us to be able to watch that. So we’ll try to move through this as quickly as we can. We have different teams working on different issues. And then we’ll go into that as we do a brief overview on what we’re doing. But there’s two teams that I really wanted to highlight based on what we said we’re focused on and what we’re trying With three teams really. The first team is our partnership with the Boulder County Health Department, as we’ve said from the beginning of this situation, they are long runs health department. And they are the one that the they started off as the incident command. We’re now working as part of a broader command structure integrated within Boulder County. And we’ll talk about that Jeff’s on the phone. And Jeff will speak to you about the stay at home order in a little bit. But I want to say that the communication that we’ve had with Jeff and his group has been tremendous. I will tell you that in my conversations with Jeff, many of the points that I mentioned previously have been on his mind is making these decisions. Jeff has had a thankless task in many ways, trying to do this in conjunction with public health directors and other communities. We have a community service team Kathy’s been provide some updates on that. That group is working on issues related to homelessness, the needs of our senior community childcare, food, generally housing attention. And generally it’s about delivering services to the population or community. Based on the orders, what I will tell you is that we are still trying to understand what that’s going to mean. Because we know because of people, for unemployment and so on, that vulnerable population is growing arms. We also have a business group, and they are engaged in conversations related to how we approach and how we can bring everything together in terms of a business Assistance Center and provide the information that our local businesses need and they are turning daily on that. That is a combination city staff chamber led EP DDA visit Longmont Latino chamber. And then we’re also incorporating Jim in the finance department and Don and Joanie in the permitting department to also bring all of those are the things we do as an organization into play when we’re talking about the business community. And as I said earlier, we’re also integrated into the larger Boulder County EEOC structure and I’m going to ask Dan to come up now, to talk about that. I’m going to share a screen so you’re going to resist visually, and Dan’s got some, a couple of charts that he’s going to go over

10:47
and Tony will start with

10:58
Okay, good afternoon, everybody. I’m in the public safety chief. And I also receive emergency emergency management. So what you see here is a pretty complicated looking thing with lots of boxes and colors and lines. And I think just as you look at this, and it really does kind of show you the complexity of this gigantic incident, and there’s no way that the city could respond to this thing alone. I mean, as you all know, this is a worldwide issue. This is something that’s affecting every state in the nation. And what we need to do as a county is respond to it as unified as we possibly can. And we made that decision early on, to try to build this structure around public health who really is the authority in this event, they’re really the ones that are issuing orders. Boulder County Public Health is long months Public Health Department too. So this structure is really designed to support public health and all of the other things. So the public health is really just Worried about public health sorts of things, epidemiology, all of those kind of things. This broader county structure is designed to support them. So you’ll see things in here like resource management, and that’s ordering things like personal protective equipment for all of our first responders trying to support the logistics needs of vulnerable population. That’s a county, everybody needs that. So we’re trying to coordinate that as a unified group. You see things on here, like a planning section. I mean, it’s really important for us to try to think through what’s happening tomorrow, what’s happening next week. Like Carol said, this thing is literally changing four or five times a day. We do our best, but who knows what’s going to happen at four o’clock today? Sometimes we really don’t know. This full thing is kind of run by groups called the agency administrators. That’s that box on the top left. Really what that is, is it’s made up of all the city managers, elected officials. Just as part of that, and that’s where we try to give direction and priorities to the whole structure. And we do that, again, as a unified group. The thing we’re really trying to prevent is one municipality, one county entity from going off and doing something on their own, because that can create a ton of unintended consequences. So this, this really what this visual is, without getting too much into every box is really trying to show you guys, we’re doing this as a county, we’re doing this as a unified response. And, you know, you’ll see this operation section there. I mean, one of the things that’s different about the flood and this event so far is is really hasn’t been a there’s been a big public safety impact so far. In fact, our police and fire calls are down, and that’s a good thing. We hope it stays that way. But the needs have really been on the Community Services side of the world so far, and we’ll kind of see how that changes as as things play out. But that’s really the message. This graphic is really just to show you that we’re doing all of this as a county and public health is really the lead agency and everything we do is really to try to support

14:24
so Mayor council at this point as we move through this stop and I want to see if there’s any questions from you all regarding the information that we presented.

14:48
No questions.

14:49
I actually have a question. Um, so what I so because we are under Boulder County Health and we follow their recommendations and their guidelines and their order. What does that do to individuals in Longmont who are on the weld county side?

15:11
Great question. And I’m just going to get to that part of what Jeff was saying. But the answer to that question is you chain right now is actually drafting in order for me to sign that will bring many of the same concepts over onto people who live in Longmont on the county’s side of the border. Or on the weld county side. There are a couple of items that you are working through based on some charter limitations. But in general, what will apply is the stay at home component because I can issue that and then bringing all of those rules to sandstone ranch and union reservoir. Most of the businesses that are in law On in the weld County area actually meet the definition of essential businesses. So generally we’re talking about McClain, Western smuckers Walmart Johnny’s behind me and she can catch me if I’m wrong. But when you look at the definition within the Boulder County order, those all would be considered essential because McClain Western distributes food. smuckers is making food and Walmart has the grocery component. If I mistake that Jeff can correct me, but I will have to issue that piece. I will tell you that I’m also in conversations or email conversations, but we are trying to touch base with Jeff’s counterpart in weld County. And there’s actually two communities of Boulder County fall into this area, the other community and Erie has some different charter opponents but they’re in Looking to do the same thing initially. And then hopefully we can have the conversation we need to with the director of health and well county to see if they can help us come into the line. But I will have to issue an order today to do that.

17:21
That’s your question.

17:25
Dude. Thank you.

17:28
All right. Any other questions from council?

17:34
So at this point, Jeff, if you can unmute yourself. We’re going to talk about all of the orders. I’m going to ask Jeff to talk about actually the older County Health order and what that means to us and then he will tie the relevant orders from the governor into this because, really, so Jeff They’re

18:15
just thanking Harold. He has been an incredible resource for us. He’s He’s really helped to work through some difficult situations, not just here. But we’ve had a great working relationship on many things. So I want you to know how much I appreciate Harold and his staff. They’ve been they’ve been incredible partners for us. The first thing I want to say is, as you already heard, we are living in a unprecedented time right now. This is really a no win situation. In terms of where we’re at, we are having to control a virus that we don’t know much about. And as you’ve already heard from both Dan and Harold that changes every single day. I saw on the national news today that today was the deadliest day of this virus with 185 new deaths in the United States. The virus is definitely acting a bit differently here than it has acted in other places. And just a couple things that has really driven us to get to the point of where we are with this order, I think are important to talk about. One of those is last week early CDC released a report that said that 69% of those people that are hospitalized, were less than 65 years old. So we’re seeing younger impacts in our population than we were expecting. And the other thing that was that was startling to us, that really had us do some more looks at research were the research from looking at what the disease was doing in the United States. And what they found out more about it in China, which is four out of five people that are spreading the disease don’t even realize that they have the disease. And that’s that’s when a virus becomes really difficult to control. And if you think about the difference between China as an example, where there’s comprehensive testing, they know where the disease is, they know exactly how to respond to the disease, because they’ve got that kind of testing. We don’t have that in the United States. And without that comprehensive testing, we’re forced to move to mitigation strategies like we are doing now. And like you’re seeing other states implement more and more every single day. So, and I also I also want to make sure I say this, I say this in every presentation, because I don’t want people to turn to chaos. That is not what we need or panic in this time, that the virus again, is going to impact 80% of the people with very mild symptoms. So most people are going to come through this fine, and 20% of those people are going to have more serious symptoms, and there’s roughly a 1% fatality rate and that is holding true for the United States. And what we’re trying to do is to slow and stop the spread of this disease as much as we can. We know there’s Gonna be significant impacts on our hospital systems if we don’t do that. And again, it’s why we’re leading into where we are right now with these with these public health orders that are in place. We do have to take it seriously. We if you if you’ve watched the national news, you’ll see that New York and Michigan now are having serious challenges with their hospital systems. And we don’t want that to happen here. We want to take it seriously. We want to do what we can to slow the spread of this virus. And these are some of the best information we have is to take the type of steps that we’re taking now. So let me just tell you a little bit about how we got here. Because I think it’s important for council members to understand this and, and for sure, Harold just referenced this. Our goal in this process we’ve been advising the state health department and the governor’s officers, a fairly large group of us that has included people from Larimer County all the way down to El Paso. a core group of public health directors from the metro area, we meet weekly with with state health department, we are looking at models together, we and those models are changing daily based on what’s happening in the United States, and we’ll get plugged into those. But we are looking at the best information to try to make the best decisions at this point. We made a strong recommendation to the governor’s office on Sunday night to move forward with a statewide order that would provide consistency across the entire state. And at that point, we had heard that the governor was not ready to move forward with that step. And at the same time, again, as any of you that have been watching national news would know the virus is continuing to spread fast. We don’t have enough testing, or the the assumptions at a best case scenario, based on what’s happened in other states are that for every positive, you have 50 times more people in your community that are actually positive With the disease, which means we’re only seeing a very small portion of the people who are actually positive in our communities. So it’s it was important for us to take a step forward and try to come together around orders that were consistent. And the consistency that Harold mentioned is a really important point that I want to emphasize. If we have different counties around us doing very different things, then it’s going to be harder for us to assure that we’re doing the best we can to control the spread of this virus. We worked really hard to get to a point where we were trying to get the entire Front Range, consistent in terms of the orders that would be implemented, the timing of those orders and and the approach and how we would move forward with those orders. And we were only able to get the Front Range counties that are surrounding boulder into that into that queue. So we have right now, Jefferson, Boulder and Tri County which is Adams, Arapaho, and Douglas are all almost identical in terms of our orders, and we modeled our orders after Denver’s Denver took a step out a little bit in front of us because the mayor wanted to move something more quickly. So we were at that point for us to follow the lead, and try to align with their orders. So that’s what we’ve done. We are very close to Denver’s order, although it’s not exactly the same. So again, for us, one of the things that felt extremely important was to do the best we could to try to align those measures to make sure that those measures were consistent across our counties so that the same controls were happening in Jefferson County as we’re happening as we’re happening here. Broomfield was in alignment with us until the very last minute of those and they stepped back and went out on their own. But their order is similar to ours. It just doesn’t have some of the same requirements that ours does. So that that kind of gives you the landscape. We have worked closely with Mark Wallace, who Who Harold mentioned is in weld county and as the director and we we put both Harold and Malcolm in Erie in touch with, with Mark last night, and we’re hoping that weld county will move forward with something similar as well. I think you probably heard today that Larimer is also issuing a stay at home order. So you’re going to see this happen more across the state, so that people are trying to make sure that we’re spreading this, we’re not spreading this virus to the maximum extent possible and car up. So so we decided it was extremely important for us to move forward in the face of not having something statewide. So I want to talk a little bit about our order. So our order, and in terms of Harold’s earlier question about the governor’s orders, so the way that the orders work, is that the the orders that are most restrictive are the orders that are the ones that are upheld. So as an example, the governor’s order says 50% of people in the state of Colorado need to be telecommuting. Our order says that no one unless you’re an essential business service as defined in that that order that we put out, can actually go to go to work. So ours is more restrictive and would be holding more restrictive in that scenario. If the city of Longmont or the city of Boulder or another city passed a more restrictive prohibition in their local orders then that would hold as the most restrictive and obviously the reason that we have wanted to make sure that we don’t have every city doing that is because if you have one city that does one thing and another city that does another it becomes extremely difficult to be able to support those kinds of things if they’re not aligned and they’re not providing the same levels of protection. So our desire and and Longmont has done right there with us which I appreciate very much as to support the order that we’ve put forth and to work with us on the length It’s in that order. So I just want to say again, how much I appreciate Longmont participation and support in this entire process. So let me just stop for a second there and see if there’s any questions. And then what I could do is I don’t know how many people have looked closely to Denver’s order, but I could highlight the differences between our order and Denver’s order to just give you a sense of, of what ours looks like versus what theirs looks like.

27:29
I’ve got

27:37
Jeff right.

27:39
Yes, Jeff. All right. So here’s

27:41
so there’s so I just want to first of all, there’s a lot of frustration going on in the community. A lot of frustration, concern and worry on the part of local businesses. And to be clear as I as I begin these questions, I am not advocate That money is more important to lives or health. My premises. Overall question is, are we doing what? Well, the health impacts of the shutdown be worse than the virus? And the questions are predicated upon things like things are changing on a daily basis and making and I hear everyone saying, no one really knows what’s going on. I’m not a doctor, but Hippocratic Oath is first do no harm. So question number one is, we’re on lockdown for three and a half weeks. Right? We currently do not have any, at least in Longmont or hospitals do not have anyone in intensive care. The beginning of this was all a push to flatten the curve. Right now there’s no one in the hospital. So what’s going to happen in three and a half weeks from the virus is still in our community, and we’re still in our homes.

28:56
I do need to back we just got some information there. Are people in the hospital here now?

29:02
All right, how many?

29:06
Three,

29:08
three in intensive care.

29:10
All right, a bass directly related to Corona virus.

29:15
That’s what we understand.

29:16
All right, so even that, right, so I’m not sure how many beds we have, but there are three. If there, I mean, just doing the calculation. If you look at the numbers, I’m not saying this isn’t serious. I’m not saying that I’m going to violate or go rogue. I’m just saying if you look at the numbers, it’s 1% 50 times that amount have not been tested and are unknown. We’re now looking at a death rate at point o five, of 1%. And so my question is what’s going to happen in three and a half weeks, when the disease is still there, people are still going into the hospital, whether our hospitals are full or not full. What then at some point, we will have to go back out into the world. This has never been about flattening the curve. It’s been about now we’re talking about beating disease, which isn’t gonna happen. So what’s the health department going to do when it’s still there in three weeks?

30:07
Absolutely. So those are those are all all important points. And we certainly, as I’m sure you can imagine, have been hearing a lot of this as well. And there’s no exact answer to this. What I would point you to is to karo Hospital Association met with the state of Washington and that happened over a week ago. And after their meeting with the state of Washington, the Colorado Hospital Association took this extremely seriously. They distributed a memo that went to every single Hospital in the state. They said that we need to take this seriously. The the hospital surge happened quickly and they were very unprepared. And it happened again this week with both Michigan who right now has been very surprised by the hospital surge you can there’s a lot of information that’s out there on this right now, as well as with New York. So just as an example When New York was first talking about this, they thought they were going to have enough ventilators. And now they’re I don’t know the exact numbers because I don’t want to misquote something. But they’re significantly, they have significantly less ventilators than they are going to need. And that means that people are going to die. And that’s it. That’s what exactly the state of New York is saying at this point. And Michigan, is repeating the same thing. So this virus is happening fast. If you think about the number of people in the community that are positive, that four out of five people that are spreading this virus, and they don’t even know that they have it when they’re spreading it. That’s exactly why we need to move forward in this in this direction. And we are I’m not going to tell you that we that we’ve looked at the models, or the best information we have, as I said before, this is a no win situation. We are doing the best that we can to make decisions that we believe will have impacts down the road and the models that are telling us that if we don’t act now that we will have hospital It’ll search and we will have difficulty and people will die. And we don’t want to get to that point I hundred percent agree with you about the impacts that we are seeing in the communities and clearly the impacts economically across her nation are huge.

32:14
And I hear you My concern is I again, it’s not a choice, the economics in life. What I’m saying is that we’re all holed up in our homes, the diseases here in three and a half weeks. And the small businesses are bankrupt, and we don’t have the the social safety net to help people the surge is still coming. And so we can’t stay in our homes for eight weeks, 12 weeks, six months. And so at some point, bullet holes, starvation and obesity from eating Doritos chips, heart disease, I mean that the numbers were I’m not hearing anyone say is I am not hearing anyone say what are the health consequences of continuing to Do this mental illness. I mean, suicide rates. You know, I mean, we’re on day two, and I am hearing people. I mean, so just for example, right? All right, so I’m getting phone calls, I get the phone call from the CEO of OtterBox, 1200 employees, I get called phone calls from our restaurant vendors. So our restaurants are currently you know, out of business you take out but we gotta lay off of all the all the employees. Now, that’s not economics. These are people who can’t afford food, can’t afford rent, who can’t afford medicine. They are going to have health impacts, deaths will occur. So right now we come out three and a half weeks later, maybe eight weeks later, I don’t know. But vendors are not earning money. They’re going to be bankrupt. They’re not going to be able to they’re not going to be around in order to support the restaurants. You’ve got dentists, lawyers, I mean no one’s calling. Everyone’s at home. No business. We’re firing people were reducing salaries. We’re not paying on mortgages. Again, so the the We are currently I mean so just like so my background screw the fact that I Mayor screw the fact that I’m on on city council, my background is economics MBA taught at CU New York Times best selling researcher. I mean, I’m telling you just like people before we’re saying that the corona virus was a was coming and people ignored it. I’m telling you, we’re not gonna have a recession, we’re not gonna have a depression. We are facing the worst economic disaster in the history of the world. And if no one is left after with jobs, we are going to face health consequences, much more than a disease that’s going to kill point O five of 1% of us. And so I pictures up on top of Everest, and we’re stuck on Everest. It’s cold and we’re scared and it’s we’re sitting in our tent, sucking our oxygen. We still have to get down the mountain. We’re still going to freeze. So coronavirus is going to be there in three and a half weeks except that I’m going to be out of business. My employees won’t have money to pay their rent. Neither will 80% of the small businesses and other industry in our in our in our state. And so what then when there’s no safety net? And so I think that I think that the health administrators, a hospital workers, the doctors, they’re all getting paid. And I think the tunnel vision here on this disease it’s worrisome and flattening the curve, fill up the ICU, lighten it up. Because we got to start, I want someone to come over and spit in my mouth so I can go get the hospital now because I’m not going to die, because we’re not full. But in the meantime, we’re all bunker down in our homes, and we’re stopped. We’re not going to stop this disease. We’re just killing all the resources we have to save us when the disease comes. And I’ve listened in on these phone calls with Mayor Hancock and the metro mayors. I’ve talked to the epidemiologists who are advising the governor. And the one thing I hear from everybody has no one knows what to do. And so what we’re doing is just doing this out of panic. Were strangling ourselves, then you throw into the fact that it’s Sorry, I’m in the dark here in the mayor’s office, then you throw in the fact that that it’s campaign season is yet Democrats, Republicans going at it. This is just freaking stupid. And I’m not panicking. I’m just saying it’s only a matter of time before people who think like me start doing things that are going to be quite concerning Cincinnati, they’re not even responding to assaults. They’re not even responding to misdemeanor crimes here in Longmont that’s gonna happen. So then what we’re letting people out of our jails, we don’t have our courts open. We’ve basically suspended the the freedom of assembly. I mean, this is insane. And I just think somebody needs to say it, it is insane. So the rest of you guys can do what you want. I’m going to follow the current orders. But this is only going to get worse and it’s not going to be the viruses that’s going to cause it. That’s all I had to say.

36:59
And I am I can respond to a couple of things that I appreciate hearing you say that you’re going to follow it. One of the things that we saw in China that is absolutely part of this, and I know that Harold has the reference to this, some of these studies and the research is that this has to happen. You can’t just shut things down and not do anything. You’re exactly right. Because what happens when you do that, is you get a spike, you shut the spike down. And then as soon as you open things back up, the spike comes back up. So I was misunderstanding what you’re asking me at the front end. Clearly there is there is options for us to take that we are taking what we talked about the governor’s what we talked to the governor’s office and CDP he about is the latest research that talks about ramping up testing. So we know that if we can shut this down, and we can slow the spread of the virus, and we can ramp up testing at the same time, which there is there is an opportunity to ramp up testing. The Colorado Hospital Association has reached out to hospitals. There’s a new FDA test that was released today. They have some testing components that are coming forth. And at the same time we ramp up our ability to really be able to make sure we’re doing all the contact investigations. We’re isolating people and making sure that we’re quarantining people who we think have the virus, but we don’t have the test back yet. Those things together, along with the shutdown is what was successful in China. And there’s guesses about how close we are to being able to be effective at that based on where we are in the United States. But that is the approach that’s being taken. That’s what’s being talked about right now. That’s, you probably have heard that, again, if you’ve been listening to the national news, those components are absolutely included in a shutdown is trying to make sure that those pieces are in place. So when guarantee,

38:47
when will we have so I mean, exactly unless we have testing or a vaccine, what we’re doing is useless. And so right when when will we have a near instantaneous test for this virus? Is it coming in a week? Two weeks, three weeks, eight weeks? I mean, when because if it’s not coming soon,

39:07
it’s not gonna matter.

39:09
That’s right. It’s expected to be within two weeks is the best information that we’re hearing. I’m happy to send that to you as a follow up after this, so that you can see at least the information that I know. And there’s and there as you know, there’s no guarantees in this. There’s no guarantees.

39:24
Well, there’s no guarantees, but the one guarantee I can tell you is that you cannot infer, for example, right. My offer 24 employees, right. We always keep on hand six months of cash reserves, that’s going to be gone in less than a month. Because everything started. You cannot continue to pay people when there’s not money coming in because contrary to belief, whether you’re republican democrat, money means nothing. It’s paper is to production. It’s the resources. It’s the effort you get, and produce to make things happen. Nothing’s happening right now. And so the I know that so I don’t know what’s gonna happen with the virus, but I do know that if this isn’t done quick it’s not gonna be good. And it has nothing to do with the virus. So

40:18
I guess what I don’t know what else to say about it other than

40:22
I just hope that I thought even hope I insist

40:25
that the Boulder County Health administrators, the state administrators, the governor, and all the people who are elected inserting patients who get salaries, and we’re focusing on this one cause of death. Why don’t we just go home and just banned tobacco? We will save infinitely more lives. But we’re all worried because I mean, if 100 people die in a car accident, we’re all gonna, you know, we’re not going to care. But if 30 people die on a plane, we’re going to put it on national news and we’re going to look at it we’re scared to death but grandma and Grandma, one of them they’ll will Die because we have to choose who to save. But right now we are going to see so much more death, illness etc. and less people start stop looking at virus models which nobody can tell me that they’re accurate and start looking at economic models and start guessing what in the hell is gonna happen? Because it’s not a guess it’s common and you’ve got less than three, three and a half weeks to figure it out. But that vaccine isn’t here like stat um

41:32
you’re gonna have Yeah,

41:34
all abide for a time, but

41:37
not not well.

41:39
17th.

41:45
You have a question for counsel?

41:48
Yes.

41:50
I would like to say something

42:00
Okay.

42:03
Okay, I would like to let Jay speak some more, because we’re here to listen to Jay. And to hear boulder County’s strategy. I would also like to say and I’m particularly would like to hear an update on how we are doing with in the county and locally with masks and other protective equipment for the hospitals. I’d also like to know whether we have any capacity or more testing me if we are going to learn the test the lessons from China from Korea, they have done universal testing so that they can sort people out so that we can get the people who are most who are most severely affected out, put them in quarantine and the rest of the

42:59
business Mrs can go on.

43:02
Denmark is also doing something, which is much more sensible than what we’re proposing to do, which is that they are going to pay 75 to 90% of every person’s wages to the business so they can keep them going. That will keep them going for a while, instead of handing somebody 1200 dollars, which will not last very long when our rents are now going past that. So

43:31
I also would like to

43:33
reassure people that if you look at the order, the Denver order, it’s really very comprehensive. I looked at it yesterday, I read it because a friend of mine who runs a business, mailing, shipping out online learning, wanted to see if there was an exception for him and there actually is the order is very, very well thought out. It lists number of of exceptions. or basic infrastructure, basic businesses. This is what we need to keep going with our basic businesses, our basic infrastructure, all those things, and there are numerous, it’s a very, very well thought out plan, or offering exceptions to certain businesses that are really essential and, and essential infrastructure. And so I would urge everybody to read the order. I hope that our order from Boulder County Public Health, which she which Jay said was based upon the Denver order, I hope it is that comprehensive and offers exceptions for basic essential infrastructure, basic essential businesses. And anyway, I just would like to go back to listening to Jay speak so that we can actually move on with this meeting. Thank you. I’m done

45:01
here of this, Tim. Yeah.

45:06
Is it Jay or Jeff?

45:07
It’s Jeff, Jeff and

45:09
Jeff. I two two questions. I’ve looked at the order. I have puzzling over number nine under essential businesses, a licensed gun and ammunition retailer so you could maybe share why that’s viewed as an essential business number one, number two, under the activities, I’m going to interpret what I’ve read to mean that walking, biking, the kinds of things that people do to maintain both health and health, both emotional and physical health, so long as we’re practicing social distancing are those things are allowed because that’s one of the questions that we’re all getting, you know, can we still ride our bike can we still understand the cake congregating parks and have playdates and those but the kinds of out direct tivities that at least don’t allow families to take a walk on the Greenway or in their neighborhoods would be acceptable. Anyway, I’ll mute myself and listen to the answers.

46:10
Thank you for those questions. And I can touch on the question that was asked earlier as well. So we have, under our emergency operations center that Dan was referencing, we have a distribution of TP that goes out to priority listed people that include health care, or long term care facilities, some of the ones that are more risk, and at this point, we have enough for a couple weeks, we are expecting some more PP to come. I know that the governor’s office because there has been a challenge with the national level PP getting to us in a way that it feels like it’s going to be sustainable for the long term. I know the governor’s office has put together an innovation task force that is looking at how can we generate pee pee within our own state. So we are looking and hoping To that, I think Boulder County, we’re actually better situated. We’ve had a lot of donations, including the st. Green Valley School District, which donated over 8000 masks. We also just received our Strategic National Stockpile distribution. So in terms of masks for us, depend with the predictions that we’re seeing coming forward. We think we have enough for two weeks or more at this point, and that that’s obviously going to depend on what happens in our community. The second the other questions that I heard you asked about, one was if I heard it was, why is ammunition and I think it’s ammunition I don’t remember exactly how it’s phrased in the in the order. But why are guns and ammunition considered an essential service, we talked with our sheriffs across the state and it was very clear and from two perspectives, from a constitutional right as well as from the ability to have and get ammunition as well as guns, not just for us. Police and Sheriff but also for other, like security guards, those kinds of things that need to be armed, that that needed to be included. And then I think the other question we had was about, why is it that it’s okay for people to be out walking around in parks and places like that. And we we really had to balance this closely. It’s important for some of the reasons that have already been mentioned about maintaining our ability to keep a positive mental health. So we’ve stressed in the order and we are doing targeted education and outreach around the order to make sure that people of groups of four or less are able to go out together as long as they are maintaining the separation of six feet and that’s really critical and all of this, we want people to be able to, to go out and make we don’t want them to be it doesn’t help and it doesn’t make sense for people to crowd on trails. are narrow. So we are doing some direct education outreach, we put up some signs on our trail heads that we know we’ve had challenges with even when we weren’t in the situation. But we want people to be able to get out and to be able to walk and exercise. And we just want them to do it in the area where they have the ability to have the isolate or the separation of at least six feet from each other. So that is that is what others have landed on across the nation. And we felt like that was important to keep in our order as well.

49:31
Jeff, this is Tim waters, and I’m the one who asked that question. I wasn’t asking why I was confirming that was that was the case. I think that’s a good decision. And I wanted to make certain that I was interpreting it properly. Okay, for my family and for the people who continue to ask me is what we’re doing okay. And I’ve said yes. Now is it okay, it’s important that you that you get out and that you direct you practice good, social distancing, but you also take advantage of r&d. environment and, and stay mostly balanced in in getting enough vitamin D in your system and those

50:05
kinds of things.

50:10
So Polly, I just wanted to follow also on the PV question locally, we talked to our hospitals everyday multiple times a day and our local clinics to like a light for public safety. On the police side, we’re pretty good. They typically don’t need PBE as often as the fire department in the DMS on the fire side there. We’re getting pretty close. We’re probably in that week to two weeks where we’re going to start running out there starting to conserve what they what they use, it’s certainly going to certainly our biggest need right now is up on the fire side. There’s a certain type of mask that the whole country is looking for right now that is kind of a shortage where we’re scouring the country for those things. We’re like Jeff mentioned, we’re kind of in the same big system. That all the county entities are. He mentioned this Strategic National Stockpile that we did get a small chunk of that there is it nearly as much as he asked for, but you can imagine everybody in the country is looking for that sort of thing. But that certainly is our biggest need. You know, I’d say on the fire side, we’re in that eight to 10 days, and we’re going to try to stretch as far as we can, but we have been shopping like crazy ever. We could look for it.

51:32
there any other questions from council?

51:35
Yeah, I have a question. And this is in regards to the grocery stores. How are we to mitigate the number of people in the stores when they get crowded? How are we able to ensure social distancing in those spaces?

51:53
Thank you for that question. Yep. Thank you for that question. The first thing we’d like you to do is if you If you are seeing crowded grocery stores, and I can give you this number and when you’re ready, but we do have a call a central call line, we want to know about those situations. Our approach with the grocery stores has been to have and I know many of them have moved to this is to move to high risk populations going to the grocery store at a certain time, but then requesting that people are following social distancing. We know for sure that we’re going to have to spend time educating people, we want you to let us know if you’re not seeing that happen. We are spending a fair amount of time looking at how we get the message out visiting grocery stores, specifically to help reduce the or make sure that there is social distancing in place because that is what is going to allow us to be successful at reducing the spread of this virus. With again, that many people spreading the virus and not knowing it, that social distancing aspect is really important. And obviously groceries at the store are also very important. And I’d heard a lot of feedback from folks to not try to win at the grocery store specifically to certain numbers of people and things like that, because it was going to be so difficult to to to institute. So we are going to focus on the education approach. Make sure that people are following the social distancing to the maximum extent possible.

53:23
Harold

53:26
has been up for a real long time. Are we not doing that?

53:30
Well, I can’t see hands over any people jumping in. So

53:34
all right after Paulie, please,

53:36
you can text if you can text me that you want to come in that way. Or you send me a message. There’s a message function. I just saw yours. So I just saw yours come up. So what you did, Marsha would help. So Polly, go ahead and then we can have Marsha come in. Great.

53:58
I’m sorry. I partially Just free to do this, I just wanted to get some update on the testing. Because to me, this is really where we’re falling down is not testing, it’s nearly impossible to get a test. I’ve tried, and it’s nearly impossible. And to me this is a real flaw in what we’re doing. If New York City can have 20,000 people tested today, we should be able to do a better job in Colorado. Thank you.

54:27
Thanks for that question. And testing is on all of our minds. Obviously, there’s been there’s been a ton of feedback that’s been provided to the governor. I know the governor’s told us that he’s met with the vice president multiple times to stress this as well. We do have we do see that there’s opportunities to increase testing in our own state. Denver has been successful at doing that. As I mentioned before, I don’t know the technicalities of all the tests, but what I can commit to do after the meeting is to make sure that I set To Harold, and he can distribute it to all of you so that you can see how we’ve reached out to hospitals to ramp up testing. Most of the hospitals that we’ve heard back from at this point, said that they can do that it’s probably going to take a couple weeks for us to get there. But we are already seeing an increased ability to do testing, especially in the metro Denver area, specifically.

55:25
Councilmember Christians are also starting to see information coming to us and they may see some of that closer to us. And so we know that’s happening. The point that I wanted to make to just blank is when you look at these two things in chapter by mistake, this tells me jump in. But the conversation I had is the order that he’s talking about really is and then on the testing piece, because I think what the end goal in this is to then shift from isolated Well, really identifying and isolating those that have Parkinson’s that correct?

56:08
Yeah, that is exactly correct. And I’m, I’m happy to make sure, Harold, if if you don’t have the link to that research that I can send that and you can share that with counsel as well. And it’s, again, it’s the same thing that you’ve heard. Tom Friedman, if you’ve watched the national press talk about in this last couple days, and it’s being repeated a lot by the governor of New York and others.

56:36
Martin and Councilmember pack.

56:40
Thank you, Harold. I think that first of all, I’d like to say that we need to reckon with the number of people who during the last two weeks of beings of staying at home by following recommendations have had this virus and recovered. I’m one of those at least To know 95% certainty according to my personals and I was never sick enough that I would have stopped my normal activity if I hadn’t known what was going on and if it hadn’t been a an advisory from the governor to do so. So I would have infected several hundred people or at least exposed several hundred people. And I think we are forgetting that that’s the primary reason for these stay at home orders. I have questions that I promised constituents that I would ask and they have to do with the people who are experiencing homelessness right now. Um, the first thing is we have we have some no eviction orders in place, but that is apparently um There’s an exemption for or low cost by the week. motels and we have a couple of those are home day laborers tend to stay in when they can. I am concerned that the way things people can be turned out of those places and and at least one of those hotels, I’m not naming names, but at least one of them has distributed fliers that say pay or you’ll be kicked out. So what’s the story? Because it clearly is a public health problem for people, the more people who are unhoused and exempt from the stay at home order on the great Republic health concern those people become.

58:54
Yeah, absolutely.

58:58
Jeff

58:59
knows I was gonna say absolutely we’ve done a lot of work on that and I was gonna defer to see if you want it to answer you want me to answer?

59:06
So I’ll start answering it have Elizabeth and

59:12
start moving but the executive order

59:18
well

59:21
direct or direct though Alessi le and Dora to identify lawful measures to avoid removing or executing eviction procedures, proceeding procedures against tenants or or mobile homeowners without cause or as a result of late payment or rent or minor tenancy violations. Then they have the DPS and the sheriff’s and others working in terms of the enforcement mechanism. Older County Sheriff actually does enforcement for evictions, and they’re not enforcing that I don’t think courts are taking those, either. So those are two pieces that come into that conversation. The only thing that that I was briefed on that I think still is hanging out there, but it really more is to a spotlight louder. So the only thing that is not that still has some capability is the evictions related to health issues. And specifically the example that I received that if you had something, a house with math, or something like that, that is a different conversation. I know there’s I’ve heard there’s a, there’s a few evictions that were actually done before this occurred. And that’s a slightly different conversation that folks trying to work on. But what were briefed on those measures are correct. Jeff, Did I miss anything? Liz, Did I miss anything?

1:01:02
No, I think you covered most of what I was going to talk about, with exception of just making sure that people are aware that if we do have people who have tested positive, we do have a place for homeless folks to go to assure that they’re not mixing with the general population. And but all those things are true. And we are working. We’ve already worked really closely with our housing and Human Services folks, on not evicting somebody or making sure that they have a place to go if they are in a mess, impacted house.

1:01:35
Okay, thank you very much. That’s that’s reassuring because there are, as I said, some landlords who are say, who are telling their residents otherwise, I want to be able to reassure them.

1:01:52
I think the key piece on that Councilmember Martin, this is what we’re also thinking about is, if you can for those communications to So we can send them to the appropriate location. So we can get accurate information out that would help us a lot.

1:02:08
Okay, um, yeah, it’s discussed on Facebook, which makes it harder. But if you don’t tell me where, who to contact them, I can tell them who to contact.

1:02:23
We will get that out to counsel in terms of we’ll figure out who the best person is.

1:02:29
Okay, thank you. Um, and the other question that I have is about the people experiencing homelessness, who are in fact, using our shelters now, at night, they don’t have any place to go during the day, because every place that they used to go and sit as closed are we considered Putting up some kind of a home base for the people in coordinated entry where, you know, I’m thinking tense I’m thinking and Zeebo someplace where they can get something to drink and, and it would be reasonable to stay there rather than going wandering around

1:03:25
causing public health problems potentially.

1:03:29
I am

1:03:30
especially concerned with the idea that that

1:03:36
they are

1:03:39
asymptomatic, but infected because we have screening to get into the nightly shelters. But there are a lot of people that would not respond to the kind of screens that that we’re able to use.

1:03:56
That’s it.

1:03:58
Jeff, want to take this one

1:04:01
I would I would defer to Carrie maybe first, but I can answer take my shot at answering it if if because Karen’s pretty involved in this process.

1:04:11
So what I can tell Council is, so we do, we’re working with hope and our partners, sheltering component and there are screening components associated going in. I think we all do understand it. It may not catch everything, but they’re doing the best they can to screen folks. That that’s also a current shower location. Correct. So we’re doing the same thing there. The challenge that we actually had this conversation so on our administrators call is, is also what does that mean in terms of the distancing and that type of issue? And there’s a I know there’s a conversation starting in that group, and it’ll probably make its way into Karen’s group. It’s a challenge to be honest with you just because of proximity and those types of issues and potentially actually creating a situation for more spread. And so that’s, that’s sort of what we’re talking about. It’s also to give you a sense of so we’re partnering with over County, the city of Boulder and others in terms of CRC location builder, they out they are receiving individuals. The cost of that is about $25,000. And that will tie into some other

1:05:45
council member pack.

1:05:47
Thank you, Harold. So, ciao. Hi. Can you tell me what the percentage increase in affected people in Boulder County has been?

1:06:00
I can give you let me just pull up the numbers. I don’t know that I have totals from the very start, but I can tell you what our current situation is, if that would help.

1:06:11
Yes, it would.

1:06:13
Bear with me for just one second. So, and this is as of this is as of today, and I can also, maybe what I’ll do is just let you know from a statewide basis, just in general, we’re holding pretty closely to what the rest of the nation is seeing about 11% of the individuals that are tested are showing a positive 9% of those individuals that are positive are hospitalized, and that’s pretty close to the 10% rate that we’re seeing at the national level and we’re still seeing a 1% fatality rate and in Boulder County specifically, and I’m sorry, I do not have any numbers for Longmont at this point. But in Boulder County as of today, we have a total of 55 cases and 31% of those are in the 19 to 29 year old room. 38% of those are in the 30 to 59 year old range, and 31% are 60 years of age and older. And that tracks back a bit to those numbers that I had reported earlier when I was presenting that CDC was reporting that it’s impacting a younger age group than than was first thought to be the case.

1:07:19
Okay, um, the other thing, actually, what I really wanted to know, was on a daily, weekly basis, what, what has been the percent of increase in new? How fast is it growing in Boulder County? And I think this actually, my question actually relates to some of the issues that Mayor Bagley brought up how fast is it growing in and making a case for why we are doing this?

1:07:50
So I can get those numbers for you. But I don’t have them right here. We can calculate that and send it to Harold to distribute to council but I don’t have that offhand. Right.

1:08:00
Okay, great, I would appreciate that. And I just want to address some of the things that Mayor Bagley mentioned and reassure him and the public that I think I myself am also very concerned about the economic research, the economic impact that this is going to have, but none of us, none of us here are doctors. And this is not something that Lamont has summed up, but I actually asked for this work session to address some of the issues, the evictions that Councilwoman Martin brought up the hopefully being able to extend leases when a lease is up without raising the rent, possibly helping people meet their rent by using some funds that we have in the city. For example, the freedom fordable housing fund. And Harold, you did address that with me. So if you could, because I was thinking that perhaps we could use the affordable housing fund for no interest or low interest loans to people who are at home, but neat are losing up paychecks. So could you address that with the larger group Herald as to why that affordable housing fund may or may not be a source of us tale for our residents?

1:09:33
So, we got a section where I was gonna ask happy to give an update.

1:09:38
Okay, I can wait.

1:09:40
Yeah, I can wait hold on text everything.

1:09:44
Right. And the other question, the other question, Harold, that I would like you to address, and one of the reasons that I wanted to have this study work session is that um, I feel that counsel has to speak with one voice. It seems Like I understand the the bit of panic, the anxiety on on the mayor’s part and on other parts, but it is worrisome to me that we give that message out to the larger residents to the larger population. So we’ve spoken when we had our one off, Susie Hidalgo fairing and I were with you about what can we do as counsel to bring this message to the residents and how do we do that? You had mentioned that perhaps we could have either channel eight or Channel, Channel three, however you want to do that. Explanations where we are actually talking and giving you an update, we’re all doing giving the same message out so that we know where the city is, what it is we plan to do, where the hospitals are, etc, everything that you’re telling us, but not everybody has access to that. doing this. So I still want to address that, if not the end of this section at another one. I think that message needs to come faster than we’re giving us. So thank you. That’s it. So

1:11:14
I definitely have some things that I counsel to think about how you’re part of that, again, I have those at the end of this to say, Okay, great. Like, I think part of it, I talked about this with all the council members early on, how do we message certain things and how do we do this? Honestly, I think the challenge is also watching other work occur right now. Right, right about the time we think we have everything, we know what we need, the message flows on us. And so that’s been the challenge on this, which is the pace of change. Okay, so we’re still working on that, but I’ll talk about that.

1:11:57
That’s great. Thanks.

1:12:00
Errol, I just want to chime in real quick. I’m not panicking. I’m not panicking. I the question I’m going to have forget all the other possible causes of death and illness when we talk again with the county after two weeks, so we’ve got 55 cases, which means we’re going to have point five or maybe one death. We’re going to have five people hospitalized. I’m going to want to know how many mental illness breakdowns have we had, how many? How many people have been hospitalized for clinical illness, how many suicides we have? Because I mean, not to mention all the other things that are kind of going to come as a result of the economy. I’m just saying, I want to know what this is causing in our community. You’re not hearing panic, you’re hearing frustration, and I can’t speak with one voice when I’m in disagree. I don’t know what our voice is. But I’m what I’m stating is not panic. What I’m stating is, this is just brutal facts. This is this is what’s ongoing, currently. And so I’m going to want to know what are the health impacts of doing what we’re doing. And those are my questions in the future.

1:13:08
So it council knows our meeting today with public safety. We’re going to be keeping track of all of that data and try to see see movement and see what we’re seeing them efficient at doing this works reading for groups. So we’re getting we’re gonna get real time information because Jeff was going to talk to you about this afterwards, but I think is we’re getting that I also want to share that with you. So you can see what we’re seeing in real time in terms of chart within the company.

1:13:40
Absolutely. All right.

1:13:45
Any more questions on this? Jeff, do you have anything else we need to finish?

1:13:54
Sorry, I had muted No, I that’s all I wanted to cover. I do want to share if people are interested to call me Number is for the call center is 720-276-0822. And I’m sorry, I said that wrong. It’s 720-776-0822.

1:14:17
Mayor Council, are there any more questions for Jeff? He’s probably got to jump on 100 other meetings. I just want to make sure that we you’ve asked everything of Jeff, you need to

1:14:35
run this polling.

1:14:37
Yes, ma’am. Can you hear me?

1:14:40
I can’t get you on the chat.

1:14:47
I can hear you, Paul.

1:14:49
Oh, okay. I just had one more question. Um, when you look at time wondering why Sorry I’m wondering why it is not recommended that we wear masks because when you look at Asia one thing that they do is they have absolute universal mask. That’s one of their strategies. And I’m wondering why we are not doing that I realized there’s a problem with supply but if nothing else we could we can make our own masks or we can use scarves or something is better than nothing to me. That is not so much to prevent us getting it and spreading anything we might have. I’m just wondering why is this just a matter of supply from job? I’m this is a question for Jeff. Is it just a matter of supply because there are a lot of lot of women out there so one up a storm of masks to give to hospitals. So that’s my question is where Jeff why no man

1:16:01
And the answer to that is what you already talked about. And what we do is we look at the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control in terms of the recommendations that they make. And when we get down to, so I don’t discourage people making personal masks for themselves or taking those kinds of those kinds of things into their own hands. When we’re talking about healthcare workers and having them messed up. There are certain standards to make a mask that are required in order to be in those environments. But simply cutting down on the ability for somebody who coughs to spread the disease can can happen with some of the things that you’ve talked about. But there is specific requirements and recommendations when we distribute to healthcare or fire or anybody like that that is responding to one of these to one of these situations.

1:17:00
counsel Jeff, I don’t know if you know this, the mayor just issued a statewide stay at home order. And counsel will obviously be looking at this and bringing it together. Jeff, I’m sure we need to talk about saving. What does that look like? Those types of issues?

1:17:20
Yeah. And I did not know that was gonna happen today. And I think you said the mayor, but you met the governor, right.

1:17:27
Oh, yeah. The governor. Governor just issued a stay at home order. Okay.

1:17:33
Thank you.

1:17:38
Any more questions for Jeff? Sorry.

1:17:48
Repeat that number. Yes, it’s

1:17:51
seven. I’m going to look at my document to make sure I didn’t write this down wrong. So bear with me. Just one second. I won’t take long at all. Thank you.

1:18:00
It is seven to 07760822.

1:18:18
And if there’s nothing else I want to thank you all for inviting me to the meeting. I really appreciate the opportunity to to answer questions like this with you. So thank you,

1:18:27
Jeff. You’re doing a good job. I mean, as much as I mean, I’m frustrated. You’re doing good work. Thank you for everything you’re doing.

1:18:35
Thank you.

1:18:38
So the next person I want to bring up is Jodie marsh. She’s going to talk about where we are on the business side. I will preface this meeting, the business side is changing just as fast. I know that they reached agreement on major points in the legislation. CML is involved in That we have folks looking at it. So we’re still trying to understand what’s out there. But Joanie, could you come up and talk about where we are we’re doing

1:19:13
near Begley members of council Jodie Marsh manager. So the llama Economic Development Partnership along with our advanced long month partners in coordination with our OEM staff put together a coordinated response team have been meeting daily and coordinating efforts around what’s going on with our local business community. The team is really looking at all facets that

1:19:37
is

1:19:38
small business, large business and how we’re communicating all the updates to legislation, policy, funding resources that are ever changing. We’ve created a community hub which resides on the Le dp website.

1:19:53
And

1:19:54
that hub is updated every day. It was last updated this afternoon and all everyone’s websites Place to that. So we’re able to get people not only to

1:20:05
Department of Labor but also to,

1:20:07
to apply for small

1:20:08
business loans. So we’re really making an effort to coordinate that. And we’ve done two surveys have gone out from the chamber and that group to gauge where businesses are out, we did one last week. And then we set one out again, yesterday was updated questions, really looking at what is happening to the small business community, from a

1:20:31
deployment perspective

1:20:32
laying off staff, what are their needs, and we’re going to continue to meat daily looking at ways that you can help to put dollars towards that. I’ve had a lot of questions about what the city may be doing in regard to dollars towards that and we’re looking at some of the contract dollars in our 2020 economic development contracts specifically that we may be able to repurpose for phones, to businesses. You’ve seen some of that before. The city of Denver and Inglewood, others are looking at that as well. So as I said, we’re meeting daily, and really trying to reach out to the

1:21:09
business community and keep

1:21:10
on top of things. And in conjunction with the public health order, I imagine we’ll also be getting a significant number of calls about people’s businesses if they can continue to operate as an essential business. And we’ll continue to work with the call center that Jeff

1:21:27
mentioned, and what’s going on.

1:21:30
And I’m happy to answer any questions that I can.

1:21:38
Questions from Council.

1:21:53
All right. Did you all hear Joni or any questions?

1:22:01
Her also counseling. Yes, ma’am.

1:22:06
I just wanted to thank Tony for giving that report. I think it’s I mean, we’re really it is really important that our small businesses, and all the businesses be able to survive, this is going to be hard for every one of us, every one of us, you know, everybody’s our pensions are down, you know, whatever. It’s all going to be difficult. But we really as a city, are committed to trying to keep our small businesses and other businesses healthy and happy and trying to support everybody. So we can keep going after this in this and it will end.

1:22:45
Right. And so part of what Johnny was talking about today that we’re also doing, a lot of folks may not know is that within our organization, and this is really something where we had a couple of people join our organization that are really talented when it comes to issues related to how we work with FEMA, how we work. We have Kathy feather behind us. You know, it’s been instrumental in leading the, the older county group in terms of in terms of the Dr. funding.

1:23:17
But we also have

1:23:21
Peter, Peter and Charlie, I just dropped her last names. You know, we’re lucky to have those two individuals, Charlie used to work for FEMA. Peter, really cut his teeth on our flood recovery, and they’re working with Dan. And it’s really also about this larger perspective of taking what’s happening within the Small Business Administration. How does that leak into what’s happening and what we’re hearing from FEMA, and how does that tie into the HUD piece and that’s really the work that we have to now move very quickly. So, so counseling and community knows, we’re not only really trying to manage what we’re dealing with today in terms of church We’re also shifting to say, how do we bring these components components together? I know some cities have already run some programs out. But we also want to understand is what’s the volume and take a little bit of time to understand how we can put together the best package we can. So we don’t get to a point in time where we realized probably didn’t do it right. And we don’t have money to do it correctly. I’ve asked Joanie and Peter and Dan, that’s gonna be on our list tomorrow with also that the partners that I mentioned earlier, is really trying to get something solidified our based on that as well. because too many points. And something I want council to know and Jim’s going to talk about is we’re also fundamentally dependent on the success of businesses in our community in small businesses, because that’s also what drives our revenue stream. And we’re having to look at some of those issues. Jeff and Jim will come on shortly and talk to you about what we’re looking at how we’re preparing for it, because in many ways that also impacts What are we going to be able to do and when we get in some positions, but Jim will come on shortly. Kathy, are there any more questions from council? I’m trying to look at the list.

1:25:24
Harold I have seen

1:25:26
I have ones. I’m like, this is the right time to ask this is about people in the gig economy, who are not eligible for unemployment. And I’m wondering which of them are essential, permitted, non essential, etc. I’m thinking specifically of people who are doing domestic lawn services and house cleaning services. To me that seems like there’s a difference between these two because The lawn services kind of people can practice social distancing while they work. Um, I’m not so sure about personal cleaning services. But I know some kinds of home care are prohibited and some are allowed. Can Can you go over what the order means with respect to those people?

1:26:23
Because they’re very vulnerable.

1:26:27
Dan, I know we’ve got folks looking at this. So can you talk about the gig economy in general? I think there was an exemption for that broader transportation in terms of tax

1:26:39
issues.

1:26:42
Liz, are you on?

1:26:47
Yes, I am.

1:26:49
So with the caveat that we don’t have the order yet from the governor that’s going to govern just looking at Boulder counties. I don’t see how long service was fit into

1:27:02
essential businesses.

1:27:06
So I think part of that gets into so here’s where the question comes in. So maintenance, maintenance. And as we look at what we need to do, in terms of maintaining our parks and our golf courses, and when I described that they said that maintenance, upkeep in your yard and your home, actually qualify. And so that’s that’s a conversation I had with the county. That’s what Councilmember Martin will be talking about Call this number and really push people into the county is because they’re going through that right now and answering those questions. So what I can say is when I asked about maintaining our golf courses and those things they said that would qualify as essential. So the number that Jeff talked about and you’ll see a local press releases, it is a call center that they are creating

1:28:03
The call centers not up

1:28:04
yet.

1:28:08
Does that mean the call center is not up yet?

1:28:12
You said they’re supposed to be this afternoon.

1:28:16
Okay. And then also I wasn’t quite clear on what you said bowling golf is the same as or different than mowing lawns.

1:28:29
Correct. And that’s where we have to look at it because the logic based on so this ties into other issues that we have in terms of can’t let that go and some people aren’t able to do it. And so you have those issues and that will be something I will put myself. Alright, just so you know, we’re asking very similar questions, because we’re struggling trying to find the nuances.

1:28:58
Okay, so don’t know Yet, but it’s a high priority question.

1:29:03
Correct. And then I just got some information from Kathy says the federally bills supposed to allow contract workers,

1:29:18
contract workers it looks like potentially 1099 to get unemployment. And so again, those are things we just have to digest to answer some of these questions.

1:29:29
Thank you.

1:29:34
Are there any other questions from council Councilmember Fairey? Yes, ma’am.

1:29:39
Yes, I was

1:29:40
wondering and maybe Joanie can speak to this about efforts being made to reach out to banks to modify loans. Something that I’ve been hearing from small business folks and even homeowners, people who are landlords, is, you know, we are in and I’m tired of saying this word in my lifetime, we are experiencing something unprecedented. And we need to change and be creative in how we are approaching this. And maybe it’s something where banks are shifting, like putting a freeze on what they’re on the principal and stop interest payments and bump it to the end of their loan. I mean, I’m just throwing ideas, things that I’ve heard things that we’ve discussed in different organizations that I’ve been working with in reaching out to our federal and state governments. I just wanted

1:30:37
to ask Kathy, last Kathy to come up and this may be part of your briefing. So Kathy is going to answer some of those questions. When she when she gets into her briefing. Regarding I think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and what they’re doing, so if we can hold back into cash reaping and just stay on the business side That would help us a lot. Are there any more questions for Harold?

1:31:07
Yeah, I want a corrected what I said. I just went through the order more thoroughly. on page seven landscapers are included, and that that is in the Boulder County order. We just don’t know yet what’s coming from the governor.

1:31:22
Thank you.

1:31:24
Again, you’re seeing we’re still digesting all of this information.

1:31:31
Any other questions on the business side?

1:31:37
Kathy, are you ready for your update?

1:31:51
Council and Kathy feller Housing and Community Investment coordinator and I was cared for a time but Karen’s back Yay. So A high level look at housing and individual assistance on the federal level. There is a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions or single family homeowners with FHA insured mortgages for the next 60 days that was part of the President’s order. forbearance can be offered which causes your mortgage payments. HUD is looking at ways to increase budget authority for housing authorities that are starting to experience their hap payments the portion that the Housing Authority pays to landlords rising due to tenant paid portion. loss of income on the tenant side so they can pay less so we’re starting to hit some budget capacity. So they are looking at how to impact that. on the state level. Governor said that landlords should wait late through April, avoid rent increases and delay evictions. And of course we’re under an eviction stay here in Boulder County. They also provided the status providing $3 million for rent assistance that we think is going to be rolled out through the housing authorities. We have a group of three housing programs of city of Boulder City along mine in Boulder County as well as the three housing authorities working on trying to get information on that and how that will roll out. There’s also have the Colorado works in tennis. It’s available through the state and unemployment benefits. Then, I guess I would caution our advice for folks that are struggling to pay their rent or their mortgage advice is always to call and talk to the mortgage or lien holder or like Lord asked for help and consideration around their issues that they’re having. And again, for mortgages, they can ask for forbearance. They can also contact the Boulder County financial counseling program who we pay to work on foreclosure prevention, they will serve as a mediator or facilitator with the mortgage companies, as well as asking and outlining forbearance and workout situations. So excuse me, that is something that is available for everybody. Um, and then this before I get into further County, things I want to say that city staff has been participating in all calls and all the different groups that have formed around dealing with in areas things that are popping up to make sure that all my needs are considered. We have a great partnership with all of those different agencies and groups and want to point out that the county has the bulk of resources. So we are working with them to prioritize all of the funding that is available in collaboration, as well as funding that we might have available as as well to make sure that we’re addressing gaps and needs that aren’t already being met. We did pull the call with individual senior independent developments. There was about six different developments that hopped on that call, just to touch base and make sure that those are operating on the same page. Your visitor policies are comparable that people are letting in home service workers, home health workers, and people for groceries and that kind of thing that they’re not shutting down totally. So that’s another way that We’ve reached out to the community to help seniors in our community make sure that their needs are being met. So the county also operates the housing stabilization program with the Human Services safety net for individuals and families experiencing housing instability. There’s a rapid rehousing program and the home study program at the Art Center operates within one month.

1:36:28
Both the Boulder County and Longmont community Foundation’s are raising funds, primarily right now funding for nonprofits that are providing direct services. But the Community Foundation was a good source of extra funding for us during the flood, so that we could continue to serve people who are undocumented and are eligible for federal or state funding that might have restrictions with it. So in the city services, community and neighborhood resources has been in contact with over 950 rental property owners to talk to them about eviction stay order, not raising rents, where they can turn if people aren’t able to pay their rent, and what we can do to try and help that. They’re still doing mediations between landlords and tenants if that’s needed, and they provide resource. information and referral and support to renters, particularly through a couple of different organizations that they can refer to CNR does have the ability to take on more cases, they triage and then refer out what they can and continue to mediate and facilitate with landlords. So as we get you information on who to call when you get issues around, that you’re hearing about people maybe trying to get exempted or not unable to pay their rent, it may be CNR that they get sent to you, but we’ll give you that information might have is continuing to provide emergency grants for water heaters, furnaces, other kinds of emergency health and safety issues. We have that set up so we can do that remotely, so that work can continue. And then Senior Services, the counseling staff is still providing services and information, referral and assistance. We’ve been working closely with cultivate which is a nonprofit organization to ensure grocery delivery for seniors in particular. And then the friends organization of the seniors has got a funding source for that can be used for undocumented senior older adults as well. So that’s a source that we’re looking at. on the food situation, the Meals on Wheels is in full operation with backup plans in place, and partnerships with restaurants set up so that if something happens and Meals on Wheels, somebody gets sick or they can’t continue. We’ve got Plan B and I think Plan C as well. The Art Center is providing lunches through drive through an all street groceries through drive thru. They’re operating right now while spring break is going on for the school districts in the school district to take that back over. When spring break is over, St. John’s Food Bank is still operating in the round pantry as well. So people can still get resources through there.

1:39:28
We are keeping in contact with our human service agencies to determine what ongoing needs that they have and help helping to address them. We also I wanted to share in one of the meetings that I was on, we talked about providing zoom meetings or podcasts to get information out to the community about some of these resources and services so the websites great, but there’s also other ways of getting that out. And we apparently want to The ABCs tried a zoom meeting and it was very successful and helpful. So that’s something that we’ll be also looking at to get word out on stuff around individuals experiencing homelessness. As you know, the evening shelters are open at two churches, they are screening for symptoms outside of the shelters. We are transporting to the cobit Recovery Center and these folder. Seven folks are at that center so far since last Friday night when it opened. One of those is from Longmont. So only one has been transported from Longmont. Volunteering has been good so far. And we are looking the county is actually hiring some people to staff and oversee the CRC so that we aren’t dependent on volunteers all the time. On the showering that is operating in conjunction with the shelters. The showering happens right before each shelter opens and it gets it goes Back and forth. Those are also screen folks are screen before services are provided. They can shower up to three times per week. First time is they just show up and get in and after that, then it is on a reservation basis. So they’ll have access to that and they sign up for specific days and times. Two people use it on Monday, a couple more last night. So we will continue to report out on how that’s working. And then the restrooms are open and most of the parks I think eight different parks have restrooms that are open. Another 12 is supposed to open by the end of this week. And they are being cleaned twice a day is my understanding. And I’m just looking at some of my so one of the ongoing needs that we do have is to ensure we have resources for folks that are undocumented. So we will continue to work on on that. The other need that has popped up is We’re still trying to understand is around providing medications for folks that are as especially as a shelter in place, delivery of medications that was a real issue during the flood getting people their medications. So working on a system to help provide that. So, I think that’s pretty much everything that I had. So if there’s any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

1:42:25
Hi, Kathy. This is Joan. Um, first of all, I want to thank you very much for all the work you’ve done. I know this is really detailed. My question is about Airbnb s. Those rentals are usually their main months in advance. Does an Airbnb fall under a business are they allowed to still keep working people coming from other states and if they are, are the renters being told about our status here as far as The rules and the closure.

1:43:05
So that’s probably a legal question. Again, I think Airbnb or short term rentals are included to be shut down, not operate. non essential.

1:43:18
exception. Shut up.

1:43:27
So there’s a residence exemption and then there’s something related to

1:43:32
travel we’ll need to probably dig into that squarely into the category so we can ask that question as well. Okay.

1:43:41
May Herald

1:43:42
arrow up sorry. Just Just Eugene, go ahead. I’m sorry.

1:43:49
Hi, council Eugene may here so there is a definition of residences in the Boulder County order. I think it’s premature without seeing the governor’s order that we know is now pending to really speculate. Okay. I think that the residences, the purpose there is more of a long term if people are coming in for short term,

1:44:11
you know, is that business?

1:44:15
That That seems to be the question, and I think we wait until the governor’s orders out. Okay, thank you,

1:44:24
Darryl. Brian. A just just one thing as an aside, I don’t know when it’s appropriate, pointed out but driving over here our golf courses are closed, right?

1:44:34
Correct. They are full.

1:44:37
Sunset golf course had foursomes on

1:44:41
on them. Anyway, I’ve just seen lots of people playing golf

1:44:48
that’s on the list.

1:44:53
Other golf courses already.

1:44:57
That’s not related to the word

1:45:00
Are there any questions on my caffeine presented?

1:45:11
No questions.

1:45:17
All right. So, now I’m gonna, what does all this mean for us? Jimmy still on the line?

1:45:27
Yeah, I’m here.

1:45:29
So I’m gonna ask Jim to jump in and go over means with us. I know Jim sent some information to the right the media about what she’s telling you off

1:45:44
the bat so counsel, I get 10 that just at the beginning of this meeting to y’all and an email, just gonna run through that. My comments are in there and I’ll add some more to it at the end. So this is all about some rough estimates for us. To be able to try to start to begin to do some budget, particularly for 2020. What we need to do in the face detect shortfalls we will be surely facing but how much and how big is the question? The approach that I took was that I wanted to estimate that for 2020, I was going to get two full months sales tax for January and then followed by some point, two full months of severe impacts on sales and use tax of this

1:46:39
Corona virus

1:46:41
impacts.

1:46:42
Then I got built into there that I would probably end the rest of the year, the following eight months, sort of a recession. How big is a question of the 20. I’m sure they would continue to be a recession. That is what was Planning for 2021 but we would not be doing 2021 estimates for a couple more months so we’ll have a better handle on where we’re at. So using that type of approach, and I hope conservative estimating I’m projecting a $14 billion revenue impact 24 there’s five funds that receive sales and use tax. 1 million of that is from reduced you from recreation, as well as in revenue and we’re going to have investment revenue impacts in all of our funds.

1:47:39
Remaining $13 million is my sales and use tax revenue shortfall as

1:47:46
the breakout step $14 million of shortfall. thousand 27 point 8,550,000 public improvement fund point seven, 5 million in the streets fun. Three quarters of a million in the open base fun $2.2 million in the public safety fund. So one thing I’ll point out that ways, we’re not concerned that it’s going to impact our ability to make any debt service payments and

1:48:19
thousand.

1:48:21
We’re finding that recently guard, we’ve begun to talk to staff about the shortfall and have them begin to do some planning about your budget adjustments. Know Last week we asked you to set tell us to set aside $1.6 million that was headed towards the emergency reserve issue instead that’s in the fund fund balance can be used to in to offset some of this revenue shortfall on that. We’re identifying one time dollars budgeted to add to these five funds We can either put on hold or else and make those somehow available to offset the shortfall. Public Safety fund, I’m hearing about that it’s going to be a challenge most of the expenses and their salary and benefits. So there’s not a lot of opportunity for savings there. We are going to have to have some thought into how we’re going to do it. But there will definitely be some budget adjustments, the operating budgets in most of these funds. We will get back with you to let you know what our plans are as soon as we can. Since we identify that we have ideas, I guess, Harold has not had time to deal with that at this point. We’re going to get with them, see what he’s good with and go forward with that and bring him to you your review as well. Get an estimate only based on two months of extreme shortfalls. If conditions persist longer. In fact, we grow by four and a half million dollars per month. What I did with my estimates is I took a look at everything laid out for us in March in April of last year. and determine which of these are good candidates to continue grocery stores that discount stores sales tax to just the Sure thing. So that’s why I hope that this is a

1:50:29
conservative estimate.

1:50:33
What we’re doing, for sure, right away, we’re gonna be we’re not we haven’t stopped hiring positions. We’re doing a selective hearing freeze. Most positions, Frozen, but there are some will be crucial to this effort. We will cut capital. We’re not starting any. They’re going to be on hold until we can make a decision on what we need to withstand shortfalls and often So to see how long this might be going on the bond projects that we funded last year, happy to say those are not impacted because it’s bond money and those monies are are set aside is not impacted by sales tax. And take a little bit of hit on that we were projected on that. But I think we’re still in a position to fund the budget or those bond projects. We are reviewing most of our expenditures before they’re made to make sure that if a high priority expenses are high necessity at this point is enterprise funds, even though they’re not listed here. I said that each one will be impacted from their investment revenues. We also need to be concerned about our bill payers and their ability to pay their monthly bills. So we’re trying to watch that closely to see what the impacts will be there. So there ready to proceed with caution as well. I’m monitoring the city’s revenue daily. Like I said, the utility bill payments and the sales tax that we’re receiving, see if there’s any trends developing, it’s early, the sales tax at reviewing out is really set a sales tax for February operations. So in radically those operations are not impacted. So that’s all I’m seeing now with pay right now versus whether or not we’re seeing deductions or how much so I will not know the impact on sales tax for at least as far as business activity going down so that that’s all not up to us until April. So it will be hard to see whether these projections I’ve made are too low or too high. Anytime before 4.4 I had if you had any questions, I could try to answer

1:53:12
questions Mayor council

1:53:16
it’s it’s Brian.

1:53:17
Hey, Jim, just a question.

1:53:18
How much how much when are our reserves? And is this the time we use those reserves? Or do the reserves stay there and we just kind of figure out how to so far the anticipated shortfall.

1:53:34
We’re banging

1:53:36
my head, you second I can pull it up. But my the answer to the second part of the question is we certainly should be looking at that 1.67 million is the amount that was was there for stabilization. So basically, for a time like this, so charted out I think we had another $300,000 Was it at before 2019. So that would be certainly a source to look at as well. But we have no central reserves as well, that is an emergency reserve. We’ll be talking about that. And bringing that back to you consideration when we bring other other recommended, or and

1:54:23
I guess the

1:54:24
follow up question is, so if we have,

1:54:27
so let’s, I mean, this is all over, and

1:54:32
it’s not a big deal.

1:54:34
That’s not me, but maybe it’s feedback. Yeah.

1:54:37
But is it? So I guess my question is, if the follow up question is, if we continue to see so let’s see, if if some of these restaurants and small businesses go under, right, or when whatever, but if that would happen and this word persist, and we have not a $14 million, but maybe a $50 million shortfall. At what point? Did the wheels come off the wagon eat meaning how? I wonder how severe is a $14 million shortfall in layman’s terms? And should it get worse? At what point?

1:55:16
Do you really, really, really get worried?

1:55:22
Well, I’m worried already. So I would say no at this point, I will say this two months you believe. I think we will, as we start to go further out at four and a half million dollars more per month, I think it’s going to begin to affect our budget for 2020. pretty significant. And I mentioned that public safety fund has mostly salary and benefits. Well, the general fund salary and benefits in it as well. So Well, now is we can withstand two months. And we’re going to come back to you and let you know how we’re going to do that. But as it moves farther on, I wish I could tell you exactly what but it’s going to begin to impact services if if if revenues don’t come back. Now, there’s a certain portion of be there one way or the other, but they weren’t all that bad.

1:56:25
All right, and I guess

1:56:26
last final question

1:56:28
is, um, so we know what’s going to go for at least another three and a half weeks. Right. And then whatever the repercussions are, after

1:56:36
that, we’ll be the repercussions.

1:56:39
What

1:56:40
I hate what are the what what services do we have as a city? I mean, just anticipating so we’re not caught flat footed should that happen? What are the services that the city would look to? What services do we have in a situation like this that we consider fat or even lean muscle or Non lean muscle that that we turn to you for at first, obviously police and fire? No. But what where do we? Where do we start?

1:57:10
So let me jump in and answer that question. So I’m gonna answer the first question and say, are we concerned? Yes. I mean, what have we done because we’re concerned. So there’s a few things. Essentially, the hiring freeze where I’m going to make a decision on what positions we fill in what position we don’t. second piece is saying, don’t spend the one time funding that we have, that we need. The third piece is stock capital projects. You know, we’re already in it, we’re in it, we’ve got to finish it. But anything that we haven’t started we need to stop that so that we can understand what that looks like and then take the broader you know, then understand, here’s what we have, and this is what it looks like. The piece on the next pieces is a harder conversation. And what I will tell you is that’s what we’re getting into right now. To then understand is what does that look like? And what are the triggers? And so the way I want to structure it is, we have a menu of things. And as we’re understanding, we’re taking through the challenges that we have. And this is a question when I say we’re hearing the same thing, hearing the same questions coming from the people that that serve our residents on a daily basis. Am I going to have a job? Am I going to do this and what we’ve said is based on what we know, today, we feel like we can manage through this situation, if it continues, and the last thing I want to touch is the people that serve this organization on a daily basis. Because at the end of the day, when it flips we’re still going to need to be there to do certain things. And what I will tell counsel is we will have that answer for you. We’re just having to work through it right now.

1:59:01
Thanks, Harold.

1:59:04
And also Jim, thank you.

1:59:09
Are there any other questions?

1:59:16
This is Tim.

1:59:18
Questions for GM are just are we at the end of this?

1:59:23
Questions for Jim or me on the financial piece?

1:59:26
No, I’ll mute. I do have some questions now for Jim.

1:59:29
Okay.

1:59:30
Okay. I do have a question. And I don’t know if you’ve read the HR 6379. About the taking responsibility take responsibility for workers and family act. What are some of the things as I’m reading, so the safeguards money’s given to businesses and and I want to see local governments in there. Kind of browsing through right now, what would be some of the impacts or some relief that we could receive from that? And what are some other things we can be as a council or even pushing forward to our state and federal level just like using utilizing the bully pulpit, so to speak, um, to get relief for our local government.

2:00:26
So So, the simple answer to that is really it’s going to be embedded in the legislation that really tax the tribe dresses, how females when approach and how they’re going to work with cities. The The, the dollars that are created if they have a DR type component on this, it’s a little bit different because every city in the United States going through this I know there is a lot of chatter today about at least in Senate Bill in contacting our federal representative about making sure that cities and cap cities like Longhorn counties like Boulder County, all into the category they can receive certain funds. I think at one point, again, this is turning really fast. I think at one point early today I heard it was like a half million population, which would exclude us. So I think if council can do one thing is to call our federal representatives and say, we need to ensure that cities and Colorado are included in this may have changed. I know it’s churning. And CML is engaged in this. I think they’re also sending information out.

2:01:46
Right now that

2:01:51
I did receive an email from Jonah gooses office and I’ll read through that and I could set forward you that information. But I want to think as I browse through it, it might address some of those things. And I think we are included.

2:02:05
Yeah. I haven’t had a chance to get that briefing yet. So

2:02:12
any other financial questions?

2:02:24
So

2:02:27
I want to count it. There’s no

2:02:30
more questions. A

2:02:42
couple things I want to cover, and it ties into some of these questions. The one thing I hope that counsel saw in the community saw is that there is a lot of work being done right now, to give you a sense of what our days look like. Looking at a schedule here and so Oh, you comes in for a briefing at eight then have a nine o’clock call with the county in terms of coordination today we have every day at 10. We have what we call a can WebEx call from the organization where I’m meeting with everyone figuring out what are we hearing what’s going on. And today at 1030, there was an economic impact WebEx at 12pm. At the leadership WebEx where I meet with leadership team. At one every day, there’s a group where all the local administrators are sitting down and talking to each other, making sure we’re in alignment or we know what’s coming at us. At three o’clock, right, three o’clock, there’s a state coordination call. And then at 430, we have another call in terms of figuring out what everyone’s working on and so on. Volume right now is is tremendous. And, and so we’re doing this dealing with the issue today, and then doing the work of looking at the issues tomorrow that you’re seeing on the business side and the warehousing side. And working with Jim on the financial side and directors doing this. And that’s what I hope today we communicated everything that’s going on. The big thing that we need, heard this before is a bunch of personal protective equipment. We have a lot of community members coming to us and contacting us and so if if you all know of anybody or can help with that, that that is a big for us. I think a lot of times, you know, we hear about healthcare workers and we hear about first responders. But we also needed in terms of the folks that are working at Meals on Wheels are senior folks that may have to work or what we’ve had to do with the housing authority. I know you all know that we’re having conversations about housing already in your situation and how we come together, I will tell you now, we’ve really folded them in and our response so that they can be integrated and henceforth they need. But literally last week, we got a call any laws and that’s because they’re going in. And so PP is an important issue for us. We are in the process of trying to secure volunteers. I know we sent an email out to council regarding getting volunteers for the CRC facility in Boulder. We have been fighting through some transportation issues we think we have that salt may need volunteers for transportation, so that may be coming out. So I think second thing the council can really help us on is clarify what we need and where and getting volunteers for that. That is a big help to us, being very careful because I will tell you One of the tenants of how we’re all trained is that donation and volunteer management can also be a simultaneous disaster if it’s not that well. And so that’s what we’re trying to make sure we don’t get over overwhelmed in that area. Probably the biggest thing the counselor can help us with in the community can help us with is really getting the community to comply with the border and still support local businesses in the way that allows for that to occur. The reality is, and people go, why are they taking these steps? I will tell you, I’ve had staff take pictures of different locations in terms of what we’re doing, and how we respond. There’s individual responsibility, there’s organizational responsibility, and there’s community responsibility, and what a lot of people are reacting to, and we’re better than most. So let me just say that When they go to a park and they see 50 kids on the playground equipment and 20 parents sitting in the shelter, people are reacting to that same or not. People aren’t listening to the advice we’re giving. And so that is also creating escalation and decision making. So one of the most important things the council can do is to help us

2:07:27
respect the orders. Do this because at the end of the day, we’re not going to get through this based on the federal government’s actions, states government’s actions. We’re going to get through this based on the actions of all of us as individuals, and as a community. And as a community we can get through. This community has faced any number of challenges. We can do it as a community, we just have to do it together and we all have to be in because together point, I want to reiterate if they can get through this. And if you want to put pressure pressure on elected officials protesting and making sure that Colorado gets the same amount of testing as other places, because we know that if we can get that and this what we’re hearing is that may shortened timeframes, but they need both of these components to work together. So if you go, what do we need? I think that’s what we need right now. And the other thing we need is, and I know it’s hard in these cases is time and patience. Because you’re churning on about 200 different things during the day and I think that’s pretty accurate number, and that’s the big thing.

2:08:50
Do you have any questions for me

2:08:58
okay.

2:09:02
So kind of one is it’s not it’s not a question in the weeds to real issue, but it does apply to a specific facility. I know childcare has been a is an ongoing, kind of a rolling issue, or first responders, healthcare, medical personnel, folks who, who are basically mission critical and have children, largely in this case of school age, who are otherwise supervised would have been, in some cases, and I’m thinking specifically now, about folks who are are critical. I don’t think they’re they’re not identified. Think about air traffic controllers. My understanding that jets is now shut down because they had somebody who was identified who was diagnosed and they’re shut down for 72 hours. It is the why or other facilities are those options for the parents of kids who would have been air traffic controllers who would have been a junior jets? I know that’s in the weeds. But but that’s going to be one of the example of a rolling issue. There is critical, at least in some of those folks are as critical as our first responders. What do we say to them in terms of what their options are? In the next few days, the next five or five days or whether they’re close through Monday?

2:10:28
So let me let me

2:10:28
ask, why is it

2:10:32
is that only one child

2:10:33
care? That’s all I have a childcare I have a couple of other questions or comments.

2:10:39
If I can get through childcare, the wires open. Hi.

2:10:49
Hi. So why the llama? Why I also had to close down because of this sickness. So it’s a mandatory 72 hours. So they’re close but they aren’t Open again on Friday.

2:11:03
But it’s a it’s a state regulation. So if someone gets sick then they they do have to close down for

2:11:09
life in that same boat, but will

2:11:11
be open on Friday. So that question. So earlier today, I mean, again, how does this change, you’re getting real time change. So what we’re trying to do is we knew we had some spots available at the why we have the same issues for critical personnel within our organization. And we were going to talk about reversing some of the contracts for our friends. We also are working through what we need to do to move our licensing so we can handle certain components of childcare within our structure and what we have done normally see us to do this in the summer. And so a couple hours ago, the direction I said I gave it, let’s look at utilizing the why. Let’s get ourselves ready. To fill this void, so that if there’s overflow with the wife, critical personnel, we have the ability to pull some of ours off and others and put it in

2:12:12
in order to create capacity there, and how do we partner?

2:12:16
Obviously, that’s changed. And I think we need probably get those options that’ll be on my list for when we finish this. And so things like this, as soon as you all hear this, if you can get what I will say is, you know, now that Karen’s here and Kathy’s here, so anything community service related, get it in, if you could get it into them as quickly as possible.

2:12:40
My work is

2:12:44
ready, so we can

2:12:47
welcome back here and by the way,

2:12:50
thank you.

2:12:52
So there, so you’ll well, there’ll be some capacity to post real time on our website or the community connections. sight demand marshes managing when these things come up that they get posted. And if you’re if you’re now in need of assistance or childcare, where do you click or who do you call? Where do you go next? Right, because people don’t have to solve those problems, like in real time. Right? If they’re mission critical, whether they’re city personnel, medical care, or medical staff or or air traffic controllers. So let me go I want to I had a question on here before the mayor made a comment about golf courses I on a bike ride yesterday, I saw folks out on the UK golf course. That’s surprising to me. The golf courses are closed, but people live close by, right the residents are going to take advantage of being out. But I did get that a call or a text from a constituent saying what do we do? They saw people in the golf course. What should we do? My response was If you want to, if you want to call that a public safety would be the only response. That’s how that’s going to get enforced. There won’t be code enforcement or somebody else, not golf course personnel, there are no volunteers out there. I also said, however, or law enforcement folks are paying attention to a whole bunch of other things right now, and probably not going to be responsive to somebody on a golf course. I know they’re, they’re close, there were people but not many. What How can we help? When we get those kinds of questions? What’s the response for that kind of behavior that our public safety folks or you would like us to be offering to you? It’s not like look the other way, but at this point in time, we got to set some priorities and I that’s probably not a high priority for public safety. What’s your advice? So so what

2:14:50
we’re doing so I will frame that conversation in terms of parks and how we’re going to deal with it. So there is a process Order County Fair Work, you know, upgrade comes in. And this is really businesses, because we’ve received a lot of calls about what why is this business open? Well, when you turn through it, it was okay for it to be open. And so there’s a process there in terms of how we’re going to deal with parks. And we’ll fine tune this tomorrow based on your question is we were really looking at our parks employees, and our code enforcement officers to have that interaction. And again, our our philosophy is going to be to educate, educate and inform as we have the interaction people spread that to the golf course too. And so that’s going to be the primary component and then only if that doesn’t work. We then consider the next phase but it’s really trying to use non law enforcement people for the first engagement in this conversation. Hi

2:16:02
And we’re also doing maintenance on the golf courses. So like, we will be this week reading, sunset aeration. Okay, so we’re trying to do that kind of work that makes it not very good.

2:16:22
In terms of our we have our maintenance staff that’s out there. So we really wanted to help people comply and figure out how to do that and that was that that

2:16:37
was posted it was posted the golf course was posted that people shouldn’t be out there but but that’s my one of my concerns is I people out there with their dogs, and frisbees and people walking the golf course. And golf. You know, that doesn’t mix well. I wouldn’t go flying around with civilians. That’s not a good idea. But it is what happened.

2:17:03
Yeah, another colleague of mine in another city, because their dog parks and now they’re walking their dogs on the golf course. And yeah, there you go. Y’all know what? The grass? Yeah, yeah. Any number of issues,

2:17:16
unrelated. I am one more question and then one observation. The question is this unrelated to this agenda but related to the use of WebEx work? I assume this is him. We’re going to meet on Tuesday evenings on forward. And as I’m sitting here thinking, and I’ve mentioned this to you before, how am I going to get to my my council materials in a WebEx format? I can minimize my screen and have my Dropbox open. I can flip back and forth. Is that is that how we’re going to have to do this?

2:17:49
I think it was saying this was today was obviously a rush.

2:17:55
Yeah, let me get with them

2:17:56
and figure that out. I think all of your individual needs

2:18:03
As I’m sitting here, I’m thinking I can do that I can flip back and forth, I just didn’t know if there was a better solution. Last observation, and this is gonna sound pollyannish and like a broken record, but it’s every time we meet we, we hear a lot of worse fears. And I, you know, this is the broken record part of this. And there are a ton of force fears. Everybody brings to this right now, in that way, and I think they have to be acknowledged Personally, I think if we’re going to do public service announcements and those kinds of things, in addition to sharing information, I’d like for us to be sharing what our best hopes are on the far side of this, because there’s going to be a far side of this. And we need to be as clear on what we’d like to see and how we strategize towards that. What’s the preferred future, it won’t be like it was in the past. We just have to acknowledge that and there’s going to be a lot of heartache that we’re going to have to add on, but it’s in our interest as a council, it’s in our interest as a leadership group in the city, and others in the city who are leaders to be as as clear and as coherent and as articulate, and as aspirational about a future as we were before that, it’ll just be different and we’re going to have a lot of support we’re gonna have to provide to a lot of people. And again, it’s I don’t want to be naive. I recognize what those worst fears are. But if I dwell if we strategize to avoid them, we will create them we need to we need to think differently about the future and and what it’s going to take to get what we hope for on the other side.

2:19:44
Waters is out.

2:19:50
So I yeah, I have a statement lines. I’d like to observe as I have been contacting the public in as many ways as I can think of to make sure everybody is alright to hear what people’s concerns are to learn what their observations are. And it’s been wonderful and inspired. People are finding cracks in the safety net but I didn’t know existed and coming up with suggestions about how to fill them up. People have been looking after each other

2:20:31
people have been

2:20:34
just doing amazing things to us all through this from from the you know, the the tiny little things like finding each other’s lost pets to huge things like a project to move ventilators around the country and get them where they are going to be. Um If you look at the helpers are coming Unity are find new ways to connect with one another. So for example, restaurants banding together to prepare food for meals on wheels so that they can deliver meals less frequently in in more bulk. You know, that’s a brilliant idea. And guess what those those restaurants are getting paid to do that not as much as they would, you know, selling retail but on the other hand, Meals on Wheels rejected a couple of the offers because they were too low and they wanted to make sure

2:21:36
that

2:21:38
that contributors were sated fairly and not losing money on this and that’s a great way to keep our businesses in business. So I am just want to thank the pup of Longmont for their creativity and their compassion and love For the helpers, because you know Longmont public media is going to be publishing a series of videos about the helpers. We’re all going to be trying to spread the word about that. And I know that it will help everyone to think in those as as we do get through this crisis. So thanks, everybody.

2:22:30
Harold, I guess I guess my only comment was,

2:22:33
my best hope

2:22:35
would be that

2:22:37
you speak with Jeff. The governor’s order is to end on April 11. That’s two and a half weeks rather than three and a half weeks. And as I’m taking away everything, yes, of course, everything I mean, sooner or later over the next 10 to 20 years we will recover. But what I would hope for is that if we do not have access to tests, let us out and let’s get on with this. And, and we do anything and everything we can to speed up the test coming as soon as possible because from what I heard everything I’m hearing or whatever I heard one of the things I was hearing Jeff say, we’re a suit of comms and the sooner we get people tested, the sooner we can actually approach this with some type of process that would be effective. But if it’s if it’s if it’s not coming, and we’re wasting our time, and so I’m certainly I’m not preaching doom and gloom. I’m pointing out that we are we are currently doing the things that we are doing that will lead to disaster. And my hope would be that we either stop or put a hard press on state and federal folks to get testing the beginning.

2:23:48
And I think that comment, Mayor Council, if you can start that hard press. Your contacts in the federal delegation is

2:23:58
starting now.

2:24:01
I have a comment I want to bring up. I want to emphasize the importance of not just the council but community out there to the community as well. It does make an impact when we are contacting and flooding our federal congressman our state legislators. All the powers that be we are flooding their lines with sending the same message of concern for our businesses for our for our our homes or livelihoods that they need to take action. It does work. I was working with a coalition through ca push through to get state testing halted. It works. Hey, we I’m working with the statewide coalition and we were reaching out with other states as well New York City. I’m working to house moratoriums on mortgages and rent freezes. We are seeing action being done. They’re listening to us. We just need to get out there and we need to start voicing our concerns. You know, I propose that we do some kind of unilateral either letter to the public or some kind of resolution where we are all coming together. These are what we advocate for. These are what we we want from our for our residents. So if there’s an appetite for that, I would like to see something like that in forward as well.

2:25:35
Carol, do I have a comment? Says Holly.

2:25:42
Okay.

2:25:45
First of all, I want to thank if for closing up I want to thank all my fellow council members, and I hope we all everybody stays well. I’ve already been in quarantine for two days for two weeks, and I’m supposed to be Today, but I guess not. I would suggest that people who can everyone who can donate to the community foundation to help us have something that the community feels like they are contributing. I think that there’s certainly plenty of reason for people to have doom and gloom about this. But we will get through this. And I think we need to send out that positive message. I also think that we should remember to thank all the people who are providing us with services to literally think that my wrote a note note on my mailbox today, thanking my postal lady, and she wrote back and said, Thank you, we really appreciate that. Because, you know, they’re just slogging along there, and they’re all alone, and they need to know that we do appreciate it. I would also suggest that maybe we consider it our meeting on Tuesday, giving some money from the contingency fund to to where it’s needed to go. We’ll need to have Errol suggests to us what is the most needed area that maybe we could give 30,000 which is half of our contingency fund. I would also remind people to please fill out your census you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, fill out your census or we will not be getting any money at any representation. So please do it. Now you got it in the mail. Please do it. And everybody look out for each other and be a little more kind and a little more pollyannish as someone waters said, it’s not being pollyannish it’s being understanding that we have, we have had very difficult times before we’ve gotten through them. We’re going to get through this too. It’s not without going to be without damage. But you know, we’ll get through it just like we always do. Thank you.

2:28:15
Aaron. JOHN, do you have any comments?

2:28:22
Just thank everybody. This was very informative.

2:28:29
Me me comments.

2:28:40
I want to thank Council for coming together quickly and allowing us to present a lot of information.

2:28:47
You actually got a chance to see the chart it’s happening.

2:28:51
But I want to tell you in the community is this

2:28:55
Our job is to

2:28:58
prepare for the Worst case situation, hope for the best, and drive to the best. We have 1000 folks that work on a daily basis to support the community in any number of ways. Actually over 1000 our folks, they’re temporary. So I think we’re at 14 people that have dedicated their lives to this community.

2:29:28
What I can tell you and what I can tell you

2:29:31
is that every one of us are committed to doing everything we can to understand what the best what the worst fears are, and to truly move toward a different outcome. You didn’t want some 2013. And I know we were all sort of taken aback by that issue. This is a different situation, if we did it, and we can do it now if we do it together. And that’s just But I wanted to say I appreciate you all appreciate your contact.

2:30:06
Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

2:30:10
Carol, thank you. You’re doing a good job. I know you’re stressed, your family misses you don’t get sick and save us all from the virus and the economic calamities that are that are coming. That’s all we ask.

2:30:25
All we can do is try

2:30:26
it. We’ll see you next performance review. We’ll discuss a race.

2:30:32
All right. Thanks, counsel. If there’s nothing else I’m going to end the meeting.

2:30:38
If I can end the meeting.

2:30:42
Thank you.

2:30:46
Thank you.