The Board of Health is meeting 08/11/2021 at 7am.
There are several information items on the agenda including a Covid-19 Update, a second quarter 2021 report, a second quarter budget performance review, and an update on approved noise variance request.
The one action item is Resolution #12-R-21 regarding the hiring of a Health Officer. This resolution expresses “concern that the City has undertaken health initiatives and enacted a public health mandate while the position of Health Officer remains vacant” and calls for “the Mayor to prioritize and expedite the hiring of a Health Officer as quickly and as practicably as possible and prior to enacting or implementing any further COVID-19 guidance or mandates in the City.”
When the resolution was introduced, Mayor Woodford specifically encouraged the alderpersons and the community to be calm and kind to one another as this piece of business was taken up.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) has posted on his aldermanic blog that his “initial read on it is that this resolution is unnecessary since we do have a qualified interim health office acting in this capacity that is capable of advising on public health issues and the hiring of a new health officer has been the top hiring priority for the city starting months before the retirement of Kurt Eggebrecht.”
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13), who is one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, has posted on her aldermanic blog:
The resolution is in no way to fault the city’s human resources department for their work in this hiring effort thus far or to fault the city’s Health Department and Interim Health Officer, Sonja Jensen, (who, for now, holds both the interim position and her regular position of the city’s Public Health Nurse) for their work since the retirement of Health Officer Eggebrecht in June. Our concern is that this position is of great importance to the city and for the purposes of advising the mayor and city staff on policy surrounding health issues.
The mayor’s action requires masking in all city buildings. Since the CDC changed their indoor masking recommendations based on a limited data set (469 cases in a Massachusetts town), perhaps the mayor, with advice from the city’s Health Department, should have stopped at strongly recommending and urging indoor masking, rather than mandating it. While cases are on the rise in the city, as expected due to what we know of the Delta variant at this time, the case load is still far lower than it has been and no mention has been made in the city’s COVID-19 reporting of hospital capacities or other salient facts in this discussion. As we all know, the city’s policies tend to trickle down to other governing entities like local school boards and local private businesses. We want the citizens of Appleton, it’s business owners, its school administrators, to have the best guidance in these matters and we believe that that begins with the position of Health Officer filled by the most qualified and best suited candidate available to the City of Appleton.”
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=869341&GUID=54AE7EA9-23B2-4603-8800-FA61DC63F965&Options=info|&Search=
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