The Common Council met 05/19/2021. Like the most recent Board of Health meeting, it really gave me a feeling of change and transition regarding Covid-19 and how the city is responding to it.
Mayor Woodford noted that this was the first meeting where all of the Council had fully assembled in person since he had been elected mayor.
Later on when the Council voted to approve some committee appointments and reappointments, he couldn’t contain himself and exclaimed, “Nice!” as he watched the vote come in on the screen. He immediately realized that that potentially came off sounding weird or inappropriate and explained that he thought it was nice that they were all voting on their tablets again and it was being input into the system automatically. He was reacting to how smooth the vote process was now that they were back in chambers and not to the specific outcome of the vote.
Although the agenda stated that they would be recognizing Health Officer Kurt Eggebrecht who is retiring, Mayor Woodford explained they accidentally put it on that night’s agenda even though Health Officer Eggebrecht’s last Common Council meeting will be the June 2nd meeting. They actually planned to honor him at the June 2nd meeting, not the May 19th meeting.
Health Officer Eggebrecht did give a brief Covid-19 update. He mentioned he was more accustomed to giving these updates on Zoom meetings where he could pull up the PowerPoint presentation.
He was excited to announce that Appleton is moving into a new phase of cases. He said we experienced a significant dip in cases over the last two weeks which brought our burden rate down from the “High” level to the “Moderately High” level, a level we hadn’t seen since June of 2020. He said that as more people are vaccinated, the number of cases are coming down. He was looking forward to getting into the “Moderate” and “Low” categories in the coming weeks.
He also reviewed vaccination rates. As of Monday, May 17, 45.4% of all residents in Wisconsin were vaccinated with at least 1 dose. In the Tri-County area, 40.6% of Calumet residents, 42.5% of Winnebago residents, and 44% of Outagamie residents had gotten at least one shot. In Appleton, 44.9% of residents had at least one dose. If you looked only at Appleton residents who were eligible to get the vaccine (i.e. those 12 and older) 53.4% of them had received at least one dose.
He said that the number of people vaccinated was having a direct impact on the cases in Appleton. He said the Expo Center vaccine clinic had provided 32,000 vaccine doses. They were going to hold clinics on 05/20, 05/25, 05/26, and 05/27. No appointment was needed; people would be free to walk in. May 27 would be the final day of the Expo Center vaccine clinic’s operation
Mayor Woodford said that the city had wrapped up their two week monitoring period following the phase that began at the beginning of May where all employees were welcome to come back to their regular workplaces. There had been no issues in terms of outbreaks or interruptions to services or operations. At this point they’re going to proceed with the June 1st date for all employees to be back at their regular workplaces. He said they were continuing to be flexible and measured as they make their way back into the office.
The Common Council also voted on a temporary ordinance regarding how the Common Council and its various subcommittees, boards, etc conduct business. Over this last year, they had been operating under an emergency ordinance that allowed them to meet remotely instead of only in person and to allow public participation to be conducted remotely as well. They were going to repeal that ordinance and replace it with a new one that encouraged meeting in person but still allowed flexibility for participating remotely.
The original language of the ordinance called for its automatic repeal on Sept. 30th. Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) made a motion to replace that proposed ordinance with a new one that would repeal automatically on June 1st with the reasoning that if staff was required to return to in person work on June 1st then the Council should return to their normal work rules also. His proposal was eventually amended by Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) to repeal automatically on July 1st. In the interim it sounded like the Council would probably consider making some kind of permanent changes to their rules to allow some kind of remote participation going forward. Exactly what or how extensive those changes will be has yet to be proposed, discussed, or voted on. It did sound like some alderpersons hoped to make permanent changes before the July 1st end date to the temporary ordinance so I expect we’ll learn more presently.
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