 Rick McGuire welcome so much for joining us. Thank you the town of Williston I'm sure is prepared and we wanted to hear a little bit about how Williston is responding and your administration is responding to this special period brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Well thank you for having or giving me this opportunity. It's it's been a difficult time for everyone and it's good to get a chance to talk with various people about the issues we're dealing with. So what's been the response in Williston do you I mean tell us about how just as a municipal entity your staff I imagine you all are at working remotely how did that transition work out for you just right up at the beginning. Well it works relatively smoothly and not everyone's working remotely for example our first responders police fire many of our public works crew the crew that tend to maintain our water system and sewer system they can't work remotely. We do have a number that are working remotely we also have a few that are working out of the town hall but it's a very very limited crew and I would say that everyone responded very quickly to the situation and we're very adaptable to the new reality that we have to deal with. Tell us about the public safety preparedness. Well one of the first things of great concern to us is we wanted to continue to be able to provide the essential services that those agencies offer the police and fire in particular and in order to do that we have to make sure that they remain healthy and so we were early adopters of wearing the proper personal protective equipment that everyone's now talking about and so because of that I'm happy to say at this point in time none of our town employees including those that aren't first responders have been sick with the virus at this point. And how else is public safety what do you what would the people in Williston what would you want them to know about the emergency preparedness of fire EMTs police? Well I think the most important thing is we're ready and available to provide the service that people expect and need and this virus hasn't changed that it's just changed a little bit of the way we operate for example wearing personal protective gear to all emergency medical calls because you never know who might be infected or who isn't. So it's important to have that kind of protocol in place and so far we've been successful in serving the needs of the community and at the same time protecting the health and safety of our employees. And is the clerk's office open? The clerk's office is open on a appointment only basis for people who need access to the land records. Yeah I remember Evan Teach said that there actually is quite a lot of activity because of so much refinancing that the land records needed to be open for title searches. Yes there certainly was that pressure but also I think number of title searches weren't sure what the future was going to hold so early on they were trying to get in as much work as they possibly could. I think that's tail kind of fallen off a little bit since the early push. And what about the parks? Are the parks open? The town parks are open but many of the facilities are not. For example the bathrooms are closed, the playgrounds are closed, the tennis courts and volleyball courts are all closed but we felt it was important to keep the parks open for people to exercise because exercise is an important part of remaining healthy. And so we have all kinds of hiking trails and bike paths that people can use and are using on a regular basis. Just tell us about how the select board is carrying out its business and how that adjustment has been to remote meetings. Well it's moved along relatively smoothly. There's a few little minor glitches with the technology but people have adapted very quickly. The select board are continuing to meet on the regular basis as is the development review board in town. We have many other boards that whose missions aren't quite as critical. They're more advisor in nature but those boards initially stop meeting. However we anticipate that they will start meeting on an as needed basis moving forward over the next couple months. And how how is it for you to run the meetings remotely? Well I'm getting used to it because we have regular meetings now with department heads and I have I'm a member of the local Rotary Club and they meet remotely now so it's getting to be secondhand. And what about your regional colleagues? Do you meet with each other to talk about the countywide response or the regionwide response? There have been no remote meetings of that nature but there have been regular communications mostly through email. They're almost daily. There are around the emails going around between the various managers of the Chittenden County communities and we're all sharing information about what we're doing, what's working, what isn't. There's a lot of cooperation going on. And what is your opinion of the governors and the state level response to the to the virus in the pandemic? I think the governor's done an excellent job of responding. His response was earlier than most other states which I think is going to help us in the longer term and I think it's been very thorough and professional and rooted in science and it's all very appreciated by the people of the Vermont I'm sure. And is there a message that you would like to give the folks of Williston well I would say that first of all the town has continued to provide its essential services and we're so that that's something if they have any concerns about they shouldn't because we're doing our best to provide that and as I said part of that is maintaining or making sure we maintain the health of our own employees and again so far we've been very successful in doing that. I think one other important point is that people shouldn't let their guards down as the weather gets nicer and maybe the number of cases starts to dwindle that is not the time to let down your guard because I think if anyone has studied the last major pandemic which is in 1917-1918 people let their guards down and it came back and in fact the second wave in some areas of the country was far worse than the first wave and so I think that's one important lesson and so we all need to practice the safety guidelines and requirements that are set down by the state and I think another important thing is to remember that this crisis will end and in many respects we will emerge from this crisis it'll take some time but we'll emerge from it I think stronger in many respects. Have you done financial planning looking at the impact of the closing of businesses on Williston's revenue? Well we've certainly started that process it's almost impossible to get too far into it however at this point because there's too many variables too many unknowns it just any planning you do will become obsolete within a week or two probably but we have certainly given it some plot and we've taken some measures in anticipation of a downturn in revenue because I know that will happen and by that I mean we've put a partial freeze on spending although we're towards the end of this fiscal year so it's really next fiscal year that we're now to worry about even more than the current fiscal year but to the extent we can save money this fiscal year that will help next fiscal year and so that that is part of it so you know we've we've started the process but it's going to be an ongoing issue as we get more and better information moving forward. So the first couple weeks when the shutdown happened I know was very intense for most organizations were there any examples of innovative problem solving that you've seen working with your colleagues who are observed in other quarters? Well I think adapting to the new technology was one big thing and again I'm very pleased with the what we've done and it frankly it's been some of our younger employees I'm sure you've heard this before that were it kind of took the ball and ran with it and so they were their work is very much appreciated and I think again early on we were working during our best to protect our own employees so that we could be effective as the crisis emerged so I think there was one other thought well anyway I think the other piece of it is the outreach efforts in adapting again to the social isolation that we're all facing. Our library in particular has had this wide range of different programs that they're offering remotely getting people involved I see neighborhoods doing that too trying to get their neighborhoods involved. Yesterday a parade of cars went by I suspect celebrating someone's birthday so people are finding all kinds of ways to adapt to the situation we have and make the best of it. And how's your family adapting what are you doing to relax in your probably very little spare time? Well exercise is certainly an important piece of this and I think the other piece is trying to find ways to keep the family connected because my family isn't all together and so we've got to find ways of connecting people from different states and in fact I have a son that lives in another country and so we're going to have a game night that's coming Saturday although for him it's game morning because he's in a different time zone but anyway I think that'll be a fun thing and using the technology obviously is an important part of trying to keep us connected so that's that's an important piece of this. What kind of games are you going to play? Well I suspect knowing my family it's going to be a trivia type game. That's good it would be kind of hard to well it might be hard to play Scrabble although I figure I'm sure people have figured that out. Well this one involves of course the video piece using computers but you also have to have a cell phone to give your answers to each question so it'll be interesting to see if all that technology works for us. Well I hope you have fun and I really appreciate your time Rick I know you're busy and on behalf of all of us in Chittenden County and certainly the town of Williston thank you so much for keeping keeping the municipal government going in the wheels of democracy turning even in this very strange and uncertain time. Well again thank you for this opportunity and I hope you and your organization survive this crisis as well as everyone else because we appreciate the work that you do and your organization in helping to you know televised or show the videos of the various town meetings I think that's an important service that you provide. Well thank you that continuity is really important especially once you figured out how to have the meetings to archive them publicly so right we're glad to help and thanks so much Rick. Okay thank you. Have a good day. Okay you too. All right bye. Bye.