 The city of Sheboygan is taking proactive steps to protect the health of our community by making recommendations that are meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus in our community and reduce the number of people infected. The steps we are implementing will impact people in our community. Our Sheboygan County Health Department is making these recommendations and consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And based upon the best information we have to protect the health of everyone in our community. We have closed the Senior Activity Center, the Sheboygan Water Utility in Maywood, and last week we saw large community events like Flapjack Day and Ice Bowling also canceled. At this time I'd like to bring to the podium Assistant Fire Chief Charles Butler, who serves as the Emergency Operations Director for the city of Sheboygan, to give us an update on the coronavirus in Sheboygan. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. As the Assistant Fire Chief, my job also is to handle all hazards emergency management for the city and I just wanted to report to you tonight that while this is something that is unprecedented and is on everybody's mind right now, it's in every media outlet, every source, every email we get right now. I just wanted to update you on a couple of things that are happening here locally for the city of Sheboygan. Right now the Sheboygan County Emergency Operations Center is partially open. This is primarily a public health emergency, so public health takes the lead and as you know, we do not have a municipal public health agency, but we do partner with Sheboygan County to provide those services to our city. So right now that operations center is open. We are working long hours through the weekend, late in the day, starting early in the morning with meetings. We do have our incident management structure in place and we are doing everything we can. Right now, honestly, the biggest part of the operation, aside from just communicating between our internal partners and the school system and the other agencies in the county, law enforcement, the hospitals, the clinics, anybody that's really impacted and there are quite a few, including businesses. So we're trying to keep everybody informed with what's going on and honestly, aside from some of the things that are happening directly related to the COVID exposures, which I will have a star Grossman from Public Health come up here in a minute, but we are doing a tremendous amount of information management right now through a joint information center. We have regular meetings with all of the concerned partners and their information people to make sure that really all of our information is as accurate as it can be, as timely as it can be and as steady and continuous into as many outlets as we can get it because at a time like this, we really need to be the loudest voice in the room and that's what we're trying to do right now. We really have to focus on getting the correct message out. So that all by itself is a huge task right now and we appreciate everybody's understanding and patience with all of these changes and disruptions to our life, but we are trying to follow the recommendations and also trying to make just good rational decisions based on how we manage our lives going forward. So with that being said, I'm gonna have Starr Grossman come up here. She is the Sheboyin County Public Health Officer and she's gonna speak to you just a little bit about some of the specifics of those cases, what this is not and what it is for us and how we're proceeding with that. So, Starr. Thanks, Chuck, and thank you for having me here today to talk a little bit. So my name is Starr Grossman. I'm the Health Officer for Sheboyin County Division of Public Health. Just gonna give you a little bit of a background so you have some situational awareness about what we're seeing locally. So we have in our county three confirmed cases of COVID-19 and in the state of Wisconsin, they're announced today that there are 47 cases and they've tested 504 people in the state and or 504 negative tests have been done in the state so far. For our three confirmed cases that we have, they came from international travel and Egyptian crews and when they came back to Wisconsin, they were told to self-isolate when they left their flight and so they were self-isolating and were supposed to call the Sheboyin County Division of Public Health or their healthcare provider if they started to have symptoms. They did go and seek care in Fond du Lat County and were tested in Fond du Lat County and we did get results of those tests on Friday, March 13th when we were also notified that they were tested so we weren't aware initially that they had been tested but once we got the results, we notified our state partners in the media and notified our community of those three cases. Sheboyin County Division of Public Health is working on our contact investigation right now just trying to make sure that we follow up with, that we follow up with, oh, okay. Jim, could you please mute your line? Sorry, so the role of public health is really making sure that we can stop the spread of this illness any further in our community. So we have a team of nurses that are working very long hours to try and make sure that we follow up with anybody who may have had exposure to these cases. So far we have about between 90 and 100 people on our contact investigation list. We've been following up with every single person on that list and calling to make sure we do a symptom review with them, see if they have any symptoms. If they don't have symptoms, they're told to self quarantine at home and we do daily virtual monitoring with them so we check in with them once a day virtually and they have to list out their symptoms. If they don't check in that day, we call them to make sure that they're doing okay. And so we ask them to take their temperature twice daily and also ask about any symptoms. If someone should become symptomatic there, we help connect them with testing through our healthcare systems. And so so far we have 90 to 100 contacts. We've referred 18 people for testing and we have four negative results back so far and the rest are pending or people that are still trying to get in for that test. We're working on increasing community awareness about our contact tracing process and our isolation and quarantine process and what that all looks like. And then we've also, as Chuck alluded to, have been working very closely trying to get messaging out to partners, especially with so many contacts in our community. There's been a lot of questions about, you know, if I'm sick and, or if I'm a contact to someone who's sick and my wife is not a contact to someone who's sick, can my wife still go around the community or do we both need to stay home? There's been a lot of questions like that so trying to clear up all that confusion and make sure that people know what their recommendation is. The biggest, everything's been changing very quickly. The guidelines from the state and federal government are changing, it seems like, pretty rapidly. So trying to stay on top of what those guidelines are and then share them out with our community. But from what we know right now, there's been no local spread of this illness within our community. So we're really just working on trying to get those contacts notified and making sure that they are self-quarantined and know how to take care of themselves if they become ill. Thank you very much. Is there any questions? Aholda Prus and Sarnson. Thank you so much, Darfur, for chatting with us today. I'm a little curious. So you said you have a contact list of like 90 to 100 people. Yes. How do you find these people? Are these people that are self-reporting that they have symptoms? Are these people that your department has identified? So it's a little bit of both. When we get a confirmed case of any category one illness and COVID is no different, we contact the person who is ill and we walk through with them based off of the disease process, who you've been in contact with in the last, and for COVID it's for the last 14 days. So we talk about who have you seen over the last 14 days and we consider close contact anybody who's been within three to six feet. So then our contacts or our confirmed cases help us to kind of build that list out of who that person would be and who we should all contact. So we start making those contacts. Sheboygan is a small community and so a lot of times when you start making phone calls like this word gets out and then people start calling you and saying, hey, I know someone who knows someone who said this and so it's a lot of rumor management and those types of things but then we try and work to the bottom of were they a true contact in helping them get resources? Are there any additional concerns with these three individuals from their time coming from the airport to Sheboygan, have they been in contact with other people? Is there any concern about that sort of community spread with those individuals? So what we look for is, they were told to self quarantine but we're really basing that 14 days off of when they became symptomatic. Okay. So and they give us that information kind of where they've been once they become symptomatic and we go from there. Okay, thank you. Yes. Any other questions? Well, thank you very much for that information. The next planned city council meeting is 22 days from now on April 8th and in the meantime, I ask all the chairs of our city committees not to schedule any meetings until the week of April 18th unless there's something very timely that has to be dealt with. On April 18th, rather week of April 13th, we'll need to close out all of the dockets from all of the committees and get those documents back to council as we close our council year and adjourn sign die to close that out. So just keep that in mind. And then our city staff has met to review operations of city government and Daryl Huffland is gonna be giving us an update on those items. Thank you, Mayor Van der Steen. As you mentioned earlier tonight, a couple of city facilities have closed. The senior activity center and the water utility payment window have closed. Also all city park facilities, buildings specifically, including restrooms are closed. Anyone that has scheduled a reservation will be notified by the city staff and refunds will be mailed to them. As far as other city facilities, all remaining buildings will be open. City staff will remain working at those locations either in place or remotely, but will always be available to answer any questions regarding city services. Face-to-face or in-person visits to these city facilities are highly discouraged. Staff will be limiting informal meetings involving the public. And again, residents are asked to contact the applicable department. There are listings and directories on the city's website. Checking with the city clerk regarding absentee voting. Again, city hall remains open and so the city clerk's office will be open for in-person absentee voting. Begins on Wednesday, March 18th, continues through Friday, April 3rd. Hours are between eight and 4.30 with extended hours on Friday, April 3rd being from eight till 5 p.m. Request for absentee ballot by mail. Again, a ballot will be mailed to you at home. So please contact websites or the city clerk's office. Registering to vote Wednesday, March 18th is a deadline for electors to register to vote by mail or online for the presidential preference primary in the spring election. After this date, electors must register in person at the city clerk's office or at the polling place on election day. Meet public library remains open at this time. Police and fire department program changes. The police department is suspending fingerprinting services, citizen academy, hop with a cop event, coffee with a cop event and police department tours. For the fire department, they are suspending departmental tours. Municipal court dates will continue as scheduled. Pre-trial conferences have been adjourned until May. All adjournment requests will be honored for any reason. Payments, again, the recommendation is to make payment either by phone or through a drop-off. Two drop-off sites are available in the city. One is located outside city hall on Ninth Street and the police department has a drop-off box as well. As we heard earlier tonight, the city is working in conjunction and will continue to coordinate with the county's public health division who is also working in conjunction with state and national health agencies. Any questions? Seeing none, thank you very much. Mike, Mike, oh, I'm sorry. My question is, or actually would be to Chuck, is it possible for committees to meet in their entirety by phone? Yeah, this isn't on quite yet, so. We have too many lights on. So the question was whether committees can meet entirely remotely. The answer to that is yes with a caveat. You can meet entirely remotely, but we must provide a location for the public to attend and to hear what's happening and to be involved and participate. So the way to do that would be to continue to hold those meetings in their regular locations but allow people to also remotely attend someone, whether it's a member of the committee or staff from city hall will have to man that location to make sure that people can hear, et cetera. All things being equal, particularly finance and personnel, we have a fairly large agenda. I mean, just viewing the items that are coming to us from tonight's meeting. I think it's something we may want to consider unless it's a huge hassle, but it would be something to think about. Thanks for bringing up that idea. Any other questions or suggestions? Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. One additional service that the city provides, of course, is transit service. Derek Mink, the utility director, excuse me, Shoreline Metro director is in contact with his counterparts as well as state and federal officials. Again, all services remain in effect. As a result of the closure of public and private schools in Sheboygan, there are going to be some service level adjustment as a result of a reduced student population. However, transit service remains in effect until further notice. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And just like to also tell people that we have a few poll workers that are in that category, older people that have a high issue with this coronavirus, and some of them are not able to make their normal workday at the polls. If anyone's interested, please call the clerk's office for more information.