Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 12
experience with transportation systems, the transit system, figuring out what types of community-
based organizations we have here in the City that can assist through Urban Programs or there might
be some opportunity to make that work.
We have virtual operations center, Virtual Emergency Operation Center established, which all of the
City leadership as well as other key stakeholders across the community like our hospitals and some of
the non-profits are on. And what we are using that for is a way to share information among all those
players is to actions that are being taken, announcements that are being made and also requests. So
if somebody has something like a question that comes up about “where do we get this” or “how do we
do this” we will triage that request within the Emergency Management Team and send that to the right
Department.
The other thing that we are working on and we have a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss getting it
formalized is a coordinated effort among all of our Public Relations and External Affairs folks within the
City. So we have a number of folks that are tasked to that day-to-day within the City and because this
is sort of an all hands on deck type of response that we are dealing with, we are going to leverage
those communications professionals, the External Affairs / Public Relations folks to help communicate,
provide press releases, social media updates to all those community stakeholders. So it is a one voice
across the City rather than every Department kind of doing their own thing.
| just will close with one thing that | think is important for the Board of Aldermen to be aware of, but yet
| don’t have all the answers and I’m not sure when | will. There was a Disaster Declaration, National
Disaster Declaration through the Stafford Act, to enable reimbursements related to the COVID-19
response and they are focused around what types of actions the City is taking to respond to the crisis.
There is still a lot of unknowns around the use of that funding related to losses, so say you know if we
had a loss related to revenue within the City due to this, if we were using it to pay employees that
couldn’t work, there are still a lot of unknowns on whether this can be used for those types of things.
However, we do know that actions that are being taken by our Fire Department, our Police
Department, Public Health you have your own set of money that’s coming in from the State; but all of
those Departments are taking a critical role in responding to this crisis. We will be able to be
reimbursed 75% for that incident so that’s something that we have asked all the City Departments to
ensure that they are maintaining the documentation because if you have ever been through a FEMA
reimbursement process, the one thing you know is you have to have all of your back-up
documentation, or else you are not going to get the check.
We also have to ensure we are following all of our procurement rules and requirements or else they
can take the money back from us when they realize that we didn’t follow the rules. So it just important
for all of you to be familiar with, that is something that we are considering when it comes to the type of
actions that we are taking as a City, whether we would be reimbursed or not. It does help us with some
of the decision making, because during some disasters we don’t know if we are going to get a disaster
declaration, so we are a little leery about whether we are going to put a massive investment in
something, whether we are hiring a large number of staff to support something. Well in this case, we
know that it’s there and that we can use for this response.
We are working with Administrative Services as well as all of the other Divisions on finalizing the
implementation plan for our continuity, you know, the plan that was discussed by the Mayor earlier this
evening around Wednesday being close off to the public. And then Friday having our operations
curtailed to only those essential employees that need to come in and serve as like a skeleton crew to
make sure that transition has worked well. That is something that | think really supports what Public
Health needs, what our Community Health needs and will enable an approach for us to leverage
employees as part of the disaster response for the City. So I'll take any questions.
