I call the March 17, 2020 special meeting of the Modak County's Board of Supervisors to
order. Please silence all electronic devices. Supervisor Collins, will you lead us in the
pledge of allegiance?
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which
it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Pastor McCurry, our moment of prayer, please.
Dear Lord Jesus, we just come before you right now.
Lord, the decisions that are being made across your country, Lord, we just pray for godly
wisdom in all the various venues that are making decisions to keep our citizens safe.
Lord, we pray that we would use faith instead of fear, wisdom instead of worry, and prayer
instead of panic as we deal with the issue of this unseen bug that's doing so much devastation
across our world and disrupting life as we know it.
But Lord, we know that we can count on you to help us to assist us.
And Lord, we just pray your protection over our town, our county, our country, our state,
our world.
And Lord, we just pray that you would just give wisdom to those in leadership above
us to do the right things to protect our citizens.
And Lord, may we just take this time and opportunity, Lord, is just to draw close to
you, Lord.
You are the source of all healing, of all hope, of all health.
And so, Lord, when we don't know what to do, Lord, we turn to you.
So we're turning to you right now.
Give our supervisors divine wisdom, Lord, in how to handle the situation in our county.
And Lord, we pray as special shield of protection around Warner View, around our senior citizens
in our community.
Keep them safe, Lord, from this virus that they're so susceptible to.
And we just ask that in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Thank you, Clarence.
Thank you.
Public comment.
This is the time set aside for citizens to address the board on matters on the consent agenda and
matters not otherwise on the agenda.
Comments should be limited to matters within the jurisdiction of the board.
If your comment concerns an item shown on the agenda, please address the board after
that item is open for public comment.
By law, the board cannot take action on matters that are not on the agenda unless otherwise
announced, the chair reserves the right to limit the duration of each speaker to three
minutes.
Speaker may not cede their time.
Agenda items with times listed will be considered at that time.
All other items will be considered as listed on the agenda or as deemed necessary by
the chair.
Are there any public comments?
Hearing none, any additions or deletions to our agenda?
Moves to approve.
Second.
We have a motion and a second.
Any further discussion from the board?
The public, all in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
No abstention?
Motion carries.
Item one, health services 1A, consideration action, requesting approval to ratify a
resolution to proclaim a local public health emergency due to the threat of
COVID-19.
Good afternoon, Stacey Sparr, interim director of health services.
I'm here on behalf of our local health officer, Edward P.
Rickert.
This is a request for the MoDOT County Board of Supervisors to ratify the
proclamation of the local health emergency that was declared by the
MoDOT County Health Officer, Dr. Rickert on 312, 2020.
On March 12th, the county health officer declared a local health
emergency for MoDOT County.
This declaration was in accordance to the California Health and Safety Code.
And this was declared in response to immediate imminent threat to the
induction of an infectious agent into our county known as the novel
coronavirus or also known as COVID-19.
This virus is considered to be a serious public health threat.
Although we have no confirmed cases that have been identified in MoDOT
County, Dr. Rickert anticipates cases of coronavirus or COVID-19 in MoDOT
County in the immediate future.
This declaring of this local emergency will enhance the county's
ability to prepare and respond when cases are identified.
And this declaration of the local health emergency also gives the MoDOT
County Public Health Officer some additional legal authorities to
protect the health of the communities within MoDOT County and to
obtain additional resources in order for us to respond to this
novel coronavirus.
We began our efforts in addressing the novel coronavirus about a
month ago where we opened our DOC on March 16th.
We found that our resources were being exceeded at public
health, so we have rolled into the EOC and a joint unified
command system with me as the IC representing Dr. Rickert as his
designee and the sheriff, Tex Dowdy.
And since then, we have been planning and rolling out different
guidances throughout the county in order to protect the people of our
county, the health and the safety.
I'm going to say just for the public's IC is Incident
Commanders at Christ.
Yes.
Sorry about the acronyms.
No problem.
Motion to approve.
Second.
We have a motion and a second.
Any further discussion or questions from the board?
I just have a question.
So are you currently recommending groups of 25 or groups of 10
after yesterday's press conference?
We're reviewing the guidance that was given out by the
governor and we're seeing what's really applicable to our
county.
The executive order that was put out is really giving the
local officials the authority to roll out the guidance as it
meets the needs of our community.
We don't have any cases, but we are looking at guidance to
make sure we're protecting the public health, but we're also
not harming businesses and such.
So we're working through that unified command system to make
those decisions.
Any other questions or discussion?
Any discussion from the public?
All in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
No abstention?
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Item two, sheriff 2A consideration action requesting approval to
ratify a resolution to proclaim a local emergency due to the
threat of COVID-19.
Good afternoon.
Texas County Sheriff and Office of Emergency Services
Director.
As all of you know with the coronavirus going around that we
are taking this extremely serious.
And on March 12th, 2020, I declared a local emergency because
of the impact of COVID-19 was having on our community.
Although COVID-19, we have no cases of COVID-19 in our
community.
Currently, we are quickly exhausting our resources.
As you know, our threshold is very, very low.
This crisis is predicted to last for several months.
And we are extremely concerned that without financial support from
the state and federal government, it has the potential to
cripple our county for years to come.
Therefore, I'm asking you today to ratify this emergency
declaration.
Motion to approve.
Second.
We have a motion and a second.
Any further discussion from the board?
On the public.
All in favor.
Aye.
Any opposed?
No abstention.
Motion carries.
Item 3, Board of Supervisors, 3A, consideration action
requesting approval of a resolution establishing interim
personnel policies related to COVID-19.
Chester Robertson, Modoc County Administrative Officer.
So as a result of these declarations, they will
have an impact on our county staff.
And we need to address our personnel policies to be able
to address those potential impacts.
There are seven elements of this interim policies.
These are based on review by County Council,
the Chair, Vice Chair, Administration,
and based on samples that we reviewed in the
member of other agencies and tailored to meet some
of our local needs.
The first aspect of this will allow the
department heads with the approval of the administrative
office with the enable employees if we need to
to have employees work remotely.
Again, the authorizations, examples of why we can't
just have everybody while we hear that happen
in other locations.
There's resource constraints to our community.
For instance, we're working to address resource
constraints for information technology.
It's not possible that we can have all people
remotely.
Some departments in order to provide the central
public service, they have to occur at our
place of business.
We will identify as those requests come if it becomes
necessary on a case-by-case basis and also be
communicating with the incident command structure.
The second one aspect of this resolution,
it allows employees that are exposed to the
COVID-19 virus.
It addresses the volunteer quarantine and it
addresses the approval process for documentation
and it addresses that this becomes the
appropriate leave balances that could be utilized
for that.
The third one addresses the impacts that we're
already seeing.
For instance, employees who have minor children
who are unable to attend school due to illness,
quarantine, school closures of COVID-19 or can't
find childcare arrangements as a result of
other impacts external to the county.
That enables them to have methods to work
remotely or to use sick leave or other forms
of leave balances.
And we will work on having appropriate forms
work in our county council that would address
the documentation that would occur with that.
And we also have talked with the auditor's office.
This fourth element of this resolution would
allow for the advancement of leave balances for
employees that do not have sufficient leave in
the event that they have quarantine.
It allows for them with those advance of those
leave accrual balances.
It makes provisions for having an agreement
between the employee and the county and
provision for repayment of those balances
over a period of time and or at the time
of separation of employment.
It also provides some other elements
related to medical certification.
It's the fifth element of there.
It also places the timeline for this resolution.
These are good for 30 days and less renewed
or modified by the board at a subsequent action.
And then it makes provisions for us
in our addressing this with the labor unions
in order to effectively correspond.
Thank you.
Motion to approve.
Second.
So just just one brief additional comment
on item three which deals with
minor children at home.
There again it references section one that
those have to be approved by department head
and by the administration.
Any discussion from the board?
From the public?
Hearing none, all in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Any abstention?
Motion carries.
Thank you.
We will work to roll those out to department heads tomorrow.
Motion to adjourn.
Before we go, I would just like to thank everybody
that's involved in these resolutions
and declaring an emergency.
Thank you for all your hard work.
This has been a basically a mud puddle
changing minute by minute.
And you all have kept us pretty well in form.
Thank you.
I want to mention that really quick.
I would like to
enhance that by stating
and thanking our federal and state members
that are also working very closely
on this and on the ICF system.
To just elaborate on what Sheriff just said,
the CAL FIRE and U.S. Forest Service
are providing personnel
on the incident command structure
to assist as is.
OES and Robert, I did not catch your name
or last name earlier today.
Robert will work just fine.
With CAL OES.
So even though I'm getting this, I have a question
that maybe someone here can answer.
As people come to us in the community
or are having problems with their businesses
because of this,
is there someone in the county
who they should go see?
So we'll actually have information coming to you guys tonight
and we want to actually do a business leave
on Rose for a lot of police things.
She's reaching out to businesses
and there's some funding that's going to come available
probably to be passed today.
Okay.
Or employees out of work
would not be the same thing.
For the owners and for the employees.
Okay.
So in a lot of programs,
they're all getting pulled out.
So we can get them on this
and get them on the project.
You guys will get a summary
and we'll actually do that every day.
Thank you.
So before I use the gavel,
I'd like to ask you...
To maybe just speak briefly about what the plan is for informing the public as things,
new information such as this is shared with the public and the board, those that have not been involved.
We opened up our public phone line today. It's 233-1350. It's on both public health
and Sheriff's Office Facebook so people can call in and we can point them in the right direction
for resources. We're really trying to tie into the senior population and get them on a list
especially if they're self-isolating so that we can check in on them and make sure they're getting
everything they can and help them if they need prescriptions picked up or they can get signed up
for the meals delivered from the senior center. We're working closely with our partners at Teach
to make sure they're not overloaded with all of this too and make sure their resources are all there.
We'll have posts every day on our Facebook page and on our website there's a red bar underneath
the picture that has an alert that will link you to all the county admin page, public health,
our Facebook page and everywhere we're posting. We're encouraging people to share our posts
so that factual information is getting to people to keep the rumors at bay.
And then we'll have stuff in the paper and on the radio as well.
And we're sending flyers out in the deliveries tomorrow for food deliveries to the seniors
to catch those people that don't do social media or might not have a paper subscription.
My sister in law, Elizabeth Bay Area, got a test because they closed down,
they basically house arrested everybody down there. Do we have that,
if things were to turn really bad, do we have that capability?
We do, so we use Code Red for our warning alert system and there's a, on our website,
they can sign up for that. They do have to sign up for that, but if they have a landline
they would automatically get that for reverse 911. We're not there yet, so we're not,
but if we need to use it, it's there.
The daily planning and community meeting.
There is a cooperators meeting, a cooperators and a community meeting at 10 o'clock every day
at the Vets Hall. If anybody wants to come, we go over kind of what we're working on
and we take all the concerns at that time so we can come back and work on them at the EOC.
So there's representatives from the business, businesses, hospitals, every,
it's the whole county at this point. We've had amazing participation
and offers of help and it's, we're really lucky that we all get along
and can work together and collaborate because we really need to right now.
Anything else? Hearing none, meeting adjourned. Thank you.