Beaches cities are adjusting to COVID-19 restrictions, limiting contact among essential employees only and holding city meetings through a virtual platform when possible to help keep the public informed and business moving forward.
Jacksonville Beach City Manager Mike Staffopoulos said March 30 the City Council will hold an in-person meeting April 6 in council chambers, but will have provisions in place for the public to attend virtually or submit questions online beforehand.
“We have the majority of our council that indicated they would be willing to show up for an in-person meeting provided they could maintain the six-foot separation and we have the appropriate hand sanitizer to make sure they can disinfect their hands if necessary,” he said.
“We have an ordinance with relationship to telecommunications within our public rights of way. We also have the approval of our comprehensive annual financial report and the assignment of lease associated with the golf course restaurant. The new tenant cannot get in there and start retrofitting for what they want to do until that assignment of lease has been executed and unfortunately, these are things that I cannot do administratively, even under an emergency. Those are items that have to go before the council,” said Staffopoulos.
Any emergency purchases allowable under the scope of his authority will come back to council for authorization and accounting purposes. According to City Attorney Chris Ambrosio, the public will have the option to attend the meeting in extremely limited capacity, view online or call in for public comment. Council Chambers have been reconfigured to limit the capacity and create a safe distance between the council members.
“We have done a tremendous amount of social distancing. We have closed [City Hall] to the public. All the transactions need to be done through the mail, electronically or through the drop box or drive-through window. We’ve dispersed our employees to make sure there’s plenty of social distancing and in many of our departments, we’ve gone to flexible schedules. So we do have employees working from home and other employees where we have critical systems such as the wastewater plant, we’ve done split shifts so that if we do end up with a confirmed case and there has to be some self-quarantining, we don’t take out the whole staff. So far, that seems to be working pretty well.”
In Atlantic Beach, City Manager Shane Corwin said the decision was made to close City Hall to the public last week and staff was sent home Thursday.
“We started transitioning all of our City Hall staff to work virtually two weeks ago out of a precaution and we were amazed at how fast things changed. "We got the ball rolling two weeks ago. We’re scrubbing old laptops, upgrading them with new software so they could log on to our network. We got all of our department heads set up first and then basically started to charge down the line from there.”
Atlantic Beach Interim Police Chief Vic Gualillo said daily briefings are conducted virtually through the city of Jacksonville and internally. Department staffing is limited to essential personnel on site with some employees working from home.
“We’re helping to maintain distance. We’re putting more restrictions on who can go in and out of certain offices to limit everyone’s exposure. It’s a change but we’re getting along,” said Gualillo, noting that the department will continue to postpone training dates at two-week intervals until the threat has lifted.
“We’re happy with the level of compliance. The citizens are being very tolerant and patient,” he said. “Even when they’re out jogging or walking the dog, they are maintaining that six-foot distance. Other than regular calls for service, I can’t say that we’re seeing a lot of things related to the restrictions that are negative. We appreciate everything the community has done for us, they are being very positive by not being on the beach. They have been really kind to us and we really appreciate that.”
In Neptune Beach, Mayor Elaine Brown said the city conducted its first successful virtual round table meeting last week. No action was taken during the meeting.
“It was our first time, but it is definitely something that we will do in the future if necessary. We had about 27 people on and we had questions that came across. It almost felt so good just to be doing something fairly normal for the city which was conducting a meeting to do city business. We did not vote,” she said.
“Before we have a voting meeting, it will be necessitated that we have our same public hearings. It just depends how long this goes on. City business is still going on and we want people to know that it’s going well. Right now, there is nothing that we consider so impending that we had to do it as this goes on. We’ll certainly have to conduct a meeting where we have to conduct public hearings where you can phone in or dial in on their computers and see it live. It just depends on how long this takes before we get back to a somewhat normal pace.”
Brown said city staff is reduced to essential personnel at City Hall, maintaining an appropriate distance while the remaining staff works virtually.
“We’ve got sanitizer everywhere and we’re cleaning it every day. People who want to pay bills can do it by check, call it in with a credit card or drop off payments in cash,” she said. “So far, people are being very cooperative but just like them, I want the beach open as soon as we can do it. All three mayors talk daily and we’re on conference calls with Mayor Curry as needed. If we open [the beach] up on a limited basis, that might be one of the first ways to go. We will be talking about and will be reviewing all aspects of how police can control it and what we can do if we put policies in place that we can all adhere to those same policies.”
For now, it’s a waiting game as city officials monitor the number of cases and follow all recommended protocol to flatten the curve. Just how long that will take remains uncertain.
