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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.council.regular.20200324 1 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL MARCH 24TH, 2020 At 5:00 p.m. Mayor Torre called the regular meeting to order with Councilmembers Richards, Mesirow and Mullins present. Councilman Hauenstein joined via video conference. SCHEDULED PUBLIC APPEARANCES: Mayor Torre said the Incident Management Team would be joining the meeting virtually to give an update and answer questions along with Nan Sundeen, the Human Services Director for Pitkin County. Ms. Sundeen said on the Pitkin County website is a Covid Relief banner and this will help people apply for financial assistance and food assistance. She said so far, they have received 645 applications for financial assistance, and of those, 260 are from the city of Aspen. She gave a demographic breakdown. She said they have received requests for rental and mortgage subsidies, as well as transportation and utilities. She said they don’t have a cap or threshold; it’s just based on people’s situations. They are mostly focusing on people who were self-sufficient before. We have an agreement with the housing authority and Snowmass that they will qualify people and then send us a list of who needs assistance. We are coordinating and working with food distributors and stepping up our case management for sick people. She said the homeless shelter at St. Mary’s is closed for the time being, but there is one at the health and human services building. The county is having the place cleaned every morning and is following all guidelines. She said that volunteers and can email Valerie Carlin if they are interested in helping out with the senior center and food delivery. They have received 30,000 from Ski Co. but we don’t know how much this will cost and how long will it last. We have no idea at this point. Pitkin County has contributed 500,000. Colorado Works has also contributed. We believe there will be some federal money and state money coming at some point. We really could use help from other landlords in town as well. We are also looking at emergency worker childcare and AVH has created a protocol for this and Kids First did a press release. We are currently trying to get people to fill out a form who needs childcare. We are a smaller community and it’s hard to find people who can or are willing to open schools but working with them to allow small groups or in-home care. Mental health is also a big one and Aspen Strong is taking the lead on promotion. Mind Springs is alternating weeks for distressed people along with the Hope Center and these services are available for everyone. Councilwoman Mullins asked about the jail and Ms. Sundeen said she is not responsible for the jail. Councilwoman Mullins asked what the process is for paying out monies to the public and Ms. Sundeen said they use the fed money first, state second and local last. She said she has the authority to waive the max amount for each person. Councilman Mesirow asked what council can do to help and Ms. Sundeen said this is the vehicle right here to work with us and housing authorities offering payment plans and maybe some other mechanisms. Help us reach out to people especially in the private sector, that would be great. We need help reaching some of the private landlords. The government has issued an order to limit evictions and foreclosures and that’s a great help to us. Sara Ott said the city of Aspen owns and controls 30 deed restricted communities. Mike Kosdrosky has come to her for approval of a program allowing April rent late fees to be delayed and for tenants to exit leases without penalty. They are currently allowing one-month rent deferral. Eligibility for deferred rent is dependent on those folks having contact with human services. She said there are 230 units controlled by the city. 2 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL MARCH 24TH, 2020 Ms. Sundeen said they are starting to help people with money right now and not waiting for the money from the federal government. The money is good for two weeks, but not a month, but it’s so generous and it’s great. Councilwoman Richards said she fully wants to help. We want to back up human services now. Councilman Hauenstein said he has a list of volunteers to forward to Valerie. The IMT group joined in the conversation, which consisted of Karen Koehnmann , Alex Burchetta and Gabe Meuthing. Ms. Koehnmann said they are currently thinking about three things: ensuring the healthcare system and first responders, as they want to make sure this isn’t overrun. Infrastructure is a crucial second piece and identifying pre-existing conditions and determining the high-risk population. The 3rd goal is regarding determinants of health: access to food and water and on-going strategies. There is more and more information every single day regarding the 60 and above age group. Transmission might happen differently, and other age groups are more at risk than we originally thought. There has been a shift in strategies because of this. The initial response was a containment response, which worked when dealing with the SARS outbreak. Now, we are into a mitigation response and are social distancing and trying to be aggressive with this to slow the transmission rate. We don’t want to see a spike that overruns the system and as of today, we have launched a symptom tracker online. With the latest public health order, it’s an act of suppression. Active suppression buys us a little time to work through the details. We are at the forefront of trying to pursue better testing in the long run. Mayor Torre asked where we go from here in regard to testing. Mr. Meuthing said they jumped on testing very quickly. Once we had the confirmation of a positive test, we needed to confirm community spread. We knew we had spread, so we did a subset of community testing. We knew it wasn’t contained so we moved to a mitigation strategy and that’s why we stopped testing. It’s labor intensive, and we don’t have the PPE available (personal protective equipment). We went through many steps to get that initial group done. We have tests from the 11th and 12th cases that we still don’t have results for. Ms. Koehnmann said at first the testing was only done through CDC and then it was very limited via the state. It’s been very tight on doing these tests and the turnaround time has been really long. There are private companies taking this on now. We are trying to be first in line for the fingerprint tests. It’s a game changer. We’ve been on the list and calling them twice a day so we are first in line for these. We still have to take PPE into account. The N95 masks are part of this and there was a stockpile which arrived yesterday and was distributed throughout the whole state and only enough for one day of operation. We really want to conserve for what we need it most right now. Until we get a better system for testing, the PPE is precious to us. Mayor Torre asked about the testing being done in Telluride. Mr. Meuthing said they immediately reached out and said they are looking for anything to help understand what they’re doing. They are doing research on a new way to test and are drawing blood from an IV site. We are going for the pin prick and currently, San Miguel is drawing blood. This takes the most PPE and is the most labor intensive. They are testing the test to see if it’s even viable because it’s not an FDA approved test. 3 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL MARCH 24TH, 2020 Mr. Burchetta said that some people watch the news and see the mobile testing sites, etc. We made the request early last week and unfortunately, we learned over the weekend, their orders with the national guard were restrictive to one week. Our request is in a queue along with Garfield county. we are waiting for word back about this. Mr. Meuthing said that testing is still available for those who need it and these aren’t being used for data, just guidance for treatment for a subset of at risk patients. Mr. Koehnmann mentioned the launched symptom tracker survey on the Pitkin website. She said the Covid 19 banner takes them to a new website for community engagement to self-report around symptoms. This was used for the flu previously and the data that came from it was pretty accurate. There is also a survey about social distancing. How are you doing and finding out about mental health because we also need a pulse on this. Councilwoman Richards thanked everyone and asked what the magnitude of the community spread is and asked if we are overreacting. Ms. Koehnmann said it’s a bigger standpoint of understanding that the subjective symptom tracker is a better way for us to understand the cases and they are receiving data points from hospital as well. Councilwoman Richards said you guys should give people the idea of magnitude and encourage the president to use the War Powers Act for the production of PPE’s. She said the games being played at the federal level is only adding to the public’s angst. John Peacock, Pitkin County Manager, said that everything is limited right now for the jail and have limited intake, which is just custodial intake. They are not doing any summons or releases, and no work release. No outside programs allowed to come in right now either. Torre thanked the IMT for their tireless, selfless and compassionate work they are doing. He said to take care of themselves and said the council is here to help, and we all have a part in this. PUBLIC COMMENT: Lee Mulcahy: Mr. Mulcahy said he has lived in the community for a quarter century. Mr. Mulcahy asked Ms. Ott is the city will move forward with forcing sale and evictions. Mayor Torre said that Ms. Ott would not be addressing Mr. Mulcahy directly on this call. Mr. Mulcahy said Ms. Ott won’t respond to his emails and Mayor Torre said he would make sure she does. Mr. Mulcahy mentioned the government announcing the halting of evictions and foreclosures during this time. Shawn Eileen: Ms. Eileen said she knows Sandy Mulcahy personally as she went to Kenya to build the water ways. She said she is an outstanding woman of society. She was teaching the people over there and she made a huge impact on society. Evicting them is wrong. COUNCIL COMMENTS: Councilman Hauenstein shared a joke that was sent to him by his daughter. He said while the IMT is in the response phase of this, the role of the elected is to stay out the way. The role and training of the IMT is to handle this. He said he is attending the meeting virtually due to the public health directive. He wants to comfort the community as best he can and be optimistic. We will get through this. He 4 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL MARCH 24TH, 2020 reminded everyone that the recovery phase is many times longer than the response phase. He said we need to brace for many years of recovery. Councilwoman Richards read a quote to the council and said there is nothing we can do before pandemic that doesn’t seem excessive and during that doesn’t seem insufficient. She said she is urging the same things we talked about before; to be proactive but not panic. She said it took a virus to make people realize that we live in a society and community and not in the economy. Would love to see some of the major commercial landlords step forward and help out. She said she knows that everyone will be holding a close watch on their wallets now and moving forward. Spending is really going to retract across the country. She said she encourages Google Health News Daily to keep informed. The numbers don’t really matter, and we should all think of ourselves as asymptomatic carriers. Councilwoman Mullins said she wants to thank the healthcare staff and city staff. Elected and all volunteers. We are lucky to live in this beautiful place and she hopes we can all try and find some joy and get outside. Please have some optimism and make sure you’re taking care of your friends and neighbors. Stay well. Councilman Mesirow said thank you to his fellow council members and everyone watching at home. He said this is unprecedented and difficult times and thanked everyone. He said we are all feeling it and we need to self-isolate to stem the spread. We are all physically isolating, and our task moving forward, is to focus on economic, social, and emotional well-being. We are lucky to live here and have people wanting to help and nonprofits wanting to help. The emails and calls of people wanting to help have been amazing. These are the best ways to move forward and feel more connected. Mayor Torre thanked everyone and city staff for their flexibility. This is about people and the community and we will be stronger on the other side. The latest public health order still remains with us. We all need to stay in and take the precautions. It is up to each of us to not transmit and we need to take action now. Please reach out if you have questions or concerns. He gave out his contact info with the city and his cell phone number. Jim True advised the council about Ordinance #04 changing from Resolution #025. CITY MANAGER COMMENTS: Ms. Ott said it has only been 17 days since first case was reported. She said one of the key roles of the city is to preserve the health of public. We’ve slowed down on our services but are taking the lead to connect workers with childcare. We are also moving forward on business support and will be providing 863 businesses with a final draft of useful information on moving forward in this situation. This packet is just a starting point for them. We are confident this is good starting place that will get built out over time. She said there are different staff members assigned as a liaison to different sectors. She plans to work with them on a virtual town hall to have some q and a to move forward. There is housing assistance available for city owned housing units. APCHA is currently working on how to have a virtual meeting in order to have 10 or less people in attendance. There is free parking available right now. Pete Strecker in finance is currently adjusting sales revenues for the city and evaluating capital and expenses so we know how to move forward regarding budget. She has paused on non-essential hiring and non-essential operating expenses. She said they are currently evaluating the impact of leave benefits. They are in process of determining how this will be handled and integrated and the financial 5 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL MARCH 24TH, 2020 impacts to the city. She also wants to caution that there are some things that don’t change for the city. We have to continue projects and pay our debts. We continue to need to pay staff. She’s concerned about supply chain interruption and is internally working with staff to balance all priorities and bring to you where the adjustments will be. Our staff is a huge asset. CONSENT CALENDAR: Councilwoman Mullins motioned to approve Resolution #024, and the minutes March 10th & 13th. Roll call vote: Mullins, yes; Richards, yes; Mesirow, yes; Torre, yes; Hauenstein, yes. Resolution #018, Series of 2020 – Colorado Water Conservation Board Grant Acceptance and Contract Award to Western Water Partnerships Councilwoman Richards said this might be one of the largest grants were going to see. Resolution #022, Series of 2020 – Wheeler Opera House Infrastructure & Modernization Phase 1 Scope Councilwoman Mullins asked if this will go ahead and phasing is due to traffic downtown and would they consider condensing construction. Rob Schober said they will proceed with phasing as previously laid out and they will comply with state and federal health regulations and the start date will be to be determined. Councilwoman Richards motioned to approve Resolution #018 and #022, Councilman Mesirow seconded. Roll call vote: Hauenstein, yes; Torre, yes; Mesirow, yes; Mullins, yes; Richards, yes. ACTION ITEMS: Ordinance #04, Series of 2020 – Emergency Response Appropriations Mr. True said he presented this as a resolution but should have been an ordinance. It’s passed through two meetings as an emergency ordinance. It appropriates 200,000 to the county and does not require a public hearing. He apologized and said this corrects it and suggested we set a special meeting for next week. Monday or Tuesday and we could do it virtually. Councilman Hauenstein moved to adopt Ordinance #04, Councilwoman Richards seconded. Councilwoman Richards said she is comfortable moving forward. Councilwoman Mullins said is supports this. Councilman Hauenstein moved to read Ordinance #04, Councilwoman Richards seconded. Roll call vote: Torre, yes; Richards, yes; Hauenstein, yes; Mullins, yes; Mesirow, yes. Ms. Henning read Ordinance #04, Series of 2020. Councilwoman Mullins motioned to approved Ordinance #04, Councilwoman Richards seconded. Meeting date set for Monday March 30th. Roll call vote: Richards, yes; Mullins, yes; Mesirow, yes; Torre, yes, Hauenstein, yes. PUBLIC HEARINGS: Ordinance #02, Series of 2020 – 949 W. Smuggler 6 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL MARCH 24TH, 2020 Councilwoman Mullins motioned to continue to April 28th, 2020. Roll call vote: Mullins, yes; Torre, yes; Hauenstein, yes; Mesirow, yes; Richards, yes. Ordinance #03, Series of 2020 – Continuation of Adoption of Wireless Communications Facilities Design Guidelines Councilwoman Mullins motioned to continue Ordinance #03 to April 28th, Councilwoman Richards seconded. Roll call vote: Hauenstein, yes; Mesirow, yes; Richards, yes; Torre, yes; Mullins, yes. Councilwoman Mullins thanked the IT team for making this work tonight. Councilman Mesirow motioned to adjourn, Councilwoman Richards seconded. Roll call vote: Torre, yes; Mesirow, yes; Hauenstein, yes; Richards, yes; Mullins, yes. ______________________________ Nicole Henning, City Clerk