04-27-2020 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday,April 27,2020 6:00 o'clock p.m. Seals said if they are not on the Planning Commission liaison for the meeting, normally they can just watch the meeting. She asked if that still applied or would it be different now and become an open meeting rule violation. Rief stated as long as she is an attendee it is okay, because they do not allow comments or any communications from attendees because they are all muted. Seals said it is nice to watch the interchange and hear how the conversation goes. She always tells herself she will go back and read the notes but does not. Johnson stated he is in favor of getting the Planning Commission back in the loop,adding that no one knows how long this will go on. They vet out a lot of things which helps the Council be more efficient. Crosby,Printup,and Seals indicated they agreed. Rief said he sent an email the previous evening about policy issues, but after talking to Mattick and Staff, they felt they needed to vet that better before it was brought to the City Council.He discussed the transition of non-essential workers. He stated the City is working through Executive Order 20-40 and all of the components prior to that and how that impacts Staff bringing anybody back into City Hall,the parks,and anywhere else the City provides services. They are working to make sure there is appropriate cleanliness,keeping the safety of the employees in mind. Currently,the City has enough vehicles to handle all of their full-time Public Works employees. In the Police Department,they sanitize the vehicles between shifts to ensure limited contact. When the City adds seasonal and part-time workers for the outdoors,there are not enough vehicles. The City is trying to work through a process of how to ensure that if there's more than one person in the vehicle,they are both safe and there is no back-and-forth contamination. He stated part of the process is to adopt a formal Leave Plan in accordance with Federal laws and State guidance.No changes have been made to that since April 17, so Staff is able to better outline what is authorized/unauthorized and how to handle any leave associated with COVID-19 of any Staff or their family members. They are also making sure they are meeting the requirements for separation. Currently, at City Hall there are a limited number of people,and they plan to keep that as limited as possible. They want to make sure that when someone comes in, even if it is on a separate day, they have their own workspace. Rief commented that the golf course was open the past weekend and they are working on plans to accommodate more COVID-19 stuff and how to allow the use of golf carts. They are trying to limit interactions and looking at best practices as far as what other golf courses are doing,and working on a method to provide beverages through a window rather than people coming indoors. They are doing a phased-in approach at the golf course to make sure employees and those using the golf course are kept safe. Rief stated a number of comments have come up about the brush site. They are challenged on leaving it open on Saturday mornings;they have had some illegal dumping.Now that there is an attendant,they will work on a way to limit it to resident-only use; commercial use might be phased in as they get through the rush of the other stuff going on. He said part of the concern is how to handle transactions on the commercial side, and they might end up sending an invoice in the mail rather than at point-of-sale. Seals asked what the illegal dumping consisted of. Page 13 of 16