Board of Aldermen 3-31-2020 Page 2
Alderman Schmidt
| am here with my bird if you hear a cracking in the background | apologize. Except for that, | am alone and |
am practicing social distancing and | can hear you. Thank you.
Alderman Laws
| am here, | am alone, | am practicing social distancing and | can hear you.
Alderman Cleaver
| am here, | am practicing social distancing, trying not to be antisocial. | am here and | am alone in my
apartment.
Alderman Wilshire
| am here.
President Wilshire
Alright tonight we have the Mayor and | think that the Mayor would like to address us before we get into the
discussion, so Mayor Donchess.
Mayor Donchess
Thank you Madam President; | wanted to take a moment to update you on the incredible efforts that our City
Employees and many others throughout the community are making to keep our community members safe
and to try and limit the spread of the Coronavirus as much as possible We should be very proud of everyone
who works for the City. This has been an incredible group effort, team effort, everyone is working very hard,
some people 7 days a week. Beginning with of course Public Health, Bobbie Bagley and our Public Health
Nurses. As of last night around this time, and | am sure we have more now, we had 28 cases. Public
Health is tracking all of those cases, investigating them, to identify contacts and try to figure out who might
have the virus and to limit contact with those people. So Public Health is doing a great job.
Of course we have Justin Kates in Emergency Management. They, along with the hospitals and others, the
CERT Volunteers, Community Emergency Response Team volunteers and our hospitals, Police Department,
Fire Department have worked on putting together the alternative recovery center which is located at the high
school. There is still some progress that needs to be made there for those who are State Reps, there are no
clear answers on exactly what the State is going to pay for. There have been sort of vague commitments, but
nothing specific, so we are working on that. But that will be available for the overflow if the hospitals become
overburdened with Coronavirus cases.
Director Kleiner and everybody in City Hall, Cheryl Lindner has been working very hard to put the operation
you see together right now; our remote operations as well as to keep all of the essential functions within City
Government going and they’ve done a great job on that. Ms. Kleiner has headed that up. Cheryl Lindner,
Ms. Lindner, has been involved in this communicating, heading up the team that communicates with the
public. So everybody there is working very, very hard. And of course there are many community members
who are doing the same thing.
As you know, the School Department is involved in remote learning and the teachers are very involved there.
Our transit system along with United Way is delivering meals and the Soup Kitchen is delivering meals to kids
every day, kids who might otherwise not have enough to eat. And, of course, all of our efforts to increase and
enforce social distancing as we call it, physical separation between people, | think we are now seeing
scientific proof in the form of the work done by the Kinsa Health. | can detail it but | will just say that their work
