Government, business leaders outline COVID-19 issues
It was made abundantly clear by officials in a virtual town hall this month that in a matter of two months the world close to home has changed dramatically.
Recently, officials from Macomb and St. Clair counties discussed the impact of the global pandemic in a Zoom webinar titled “COVID-19 from a County Perspective.”
The webinar, presented by a partnership of the Blue Water Area and Macomb County chambers of commerce, was moderated by Ron Chriss of DTE Energy. Taking part were St. Clair County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jeff Bohm and Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, as well as Blue Water Area Chamber President and CEO Thelma Castillo and Macomb County Chamber CEO Kelley Lovati.
Hackel said Macomb County officials began mobilizing back when COVID-19 was coming to the country, establishing its emergency management facility and working with health officials. It took a while for the public to get the message, as many were uncertain about the truthfulness of reports, but once people began to understand when it actually hit they helped to flatten the curve. He went on to praise the county health department.
Bohm said St. Clair County has been fortunate in that it has not been hit as hard. The county did a systematic slowdown in order to get ready for COVID-19 when it first hit and shouted out the St. Clair County Emergency Center, headed up by Dr. Annette Mercatante, medical health officer at the St. Clair County Health Department, and St. Clair County Emergency
Management Director Justin Westmiller, who are front and center.
Chriss asked how county employees and leaders were holding up.
Bohm said a few people in the county jail have tested positive, but he has not really heard of any other county employees test positive. St. Clair County has been shut down and officials are looking at furloughs and layoffs for some employees, including the library system, which he said would not be opening up any time soon.
“There’s potentially 30% of our workforce that may be taking some furloughs, temporary layoffs. That’s kind of the next thing that we’re looking at here in St. Clair County,” he said.
Hackel said in the early stages, department heads began to have a lot of virtual meetings and decided to find remote works sites for everyone, with each department determining how it would operate. He said about 80% of people are working at alternate sites, and those who are not doing anything are helping out with things, such as Meals on Wheels.
“People have really stepped up here and it’s really had an impact on reducing the problem here in Macomb County,” he said. “We have not shut county government down. We are still operating.”
He said departments will ramp back up again when the demand for services is up and people feel safe, but the county will allow them to make their own decisions as to when that is. On the emergency management side, communication has been key. He added there is an all-time low inmate population at the jail, which only has five cases of COVID-19.
Bohm added in the first
(Macomb County Executive Mark) Hackel expects jobs will be back once businesses start to open, but it may take another year or two to get back to where things were.
couple weeks of the outbreak, administrators would put a plan in place and then have to change it very quickly afterward when new news came in, because there was no play manual for them to follow. Administrators are now on a consistent path with county operations.
Chriss asked about the counties’ finances. Both officials said their counties’ finances look to be in good shape currently, but there could be dark days ahead.
Hackel predicts there will be challenges at every level of government. Things have changed and the county will need a structural response to the deficit it will see.
He mentioned that Macomb County got $152.5 million from the government to deal with a number of different areas for financial crisis, including small business. Businesses have been given some funds in a first round and the county will be giving a second round with “tens of millions of dollars” from the federal government as well.
The pandemic came as St. Clair County had just begun to rebound from the great recession.
“We really finally have hit stride here in St. Clair County, if you look at all our small towns and even our larger communities, you go to our downtowns, if you go back to the 2009, 2010, it was tough out there,” he said. “It was like ghost towns in some of these towns. You go through today, businesses are full and thriving, restaurants, bars, all the ancillary types of stores; I can’t imagine if we had to go back, if we lost 20% or 30% of that, we’d look like we did back in 2009 or 2010. We’ve worked way too hard to get here and we’re going to do whatever we possibly can not to go back to that.”
Hackel expects jobs will be back once businesses start to open, but it may take another year or two to get back to where things were. Bohm also said jobs would come back when businesses did, and mentioned a few fields that were experiencing growth, including the automotive sector.
With a new executive order directing most people to stay home until May 28 and a six-point plan in place, Hackel stated he does not anticipate law enforcement to become heavy handed in Macomb County.
“You got to trust that people are going to go ahead and make the right decisions because they know the severity of the situation,” he said. “Give them a little bit more latitude as opposed to posing it as with a punitive nature if you’re not complying.”
Hackel closed by saying the response of school leaders in Macomb County to COVID-19 has been incredible. He mentioned that when schools first closed, districts immediately knew they needed to get food out and made plans to do so, including putting meals on buses. He also mentioned the Meals on Wheels program, which also gets food out to seniors.