LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Board of Supervisors is continuing, for the time being, policies of limiting the county government’s in-person delivery of services to the public and a closure of its chambers during meetings because of COVID-19.
At its meeting last week – the board did not meet this week because of the Presidents Day holiday – the supervisors agreed to keep in place the resolution authorizing temporary reduction of in-person delivery of county services while increasing alternative methods for service delivery.
The board passed the resolution during a special meeting in January following an increase in COVID-19 cases.
The resolution has to be reviewed every 30 days, which the board did at its Feb. 9 meeting. At that time, the board took no action to change it, so the monthly reviews will continue until the board decides it’s safe to reopen.
It was noted during the discussion by County Administrative Office Carol Huchingson that so far very few county employees have been vaccinated against the virus.
That discussion was followed by the weekly review of the board’s decision to keep its chambers closed for in-person meetings.
Board members supported the chambers remaining closed for the time being. While new case numbers are dropping, supervisors didn’t want to change that trend by reopening too soon.
Supervisor Jessica Pyska said that when they do reopen the chambers, they need to look at ways to protect the staff that work in the room during the meetings and enforcing the masking ordinance needs to be part of that discussion.
Board Chair Bruno Sabatier said that, rather than having the chambers situation reviewed weekly, they should have a trigger to bring it back, such as the county dropping out of the purple tier on the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy and into the red tier, or when the county reaches a certain number of cases.
Supervisor Tina Scott agreed with the trigger, but noted that the state is revamping its tier system so they need to determine what that trigger might be.
Pyska also agreed to a trigger and then asked how to enforce masking in the chambers.
Sabatier said the county offers alternative models to access the meeting virtually so if the board chose to take a hard line and require masking – which he said he personally didn’t support doing – he would be willing to draw that hard line.
He suggested dropping into the red tier as a trigger to allowing the public back into the chamber.
Supervisor Moke Simon said the board has done a great job with the hybrid meeting models, and when reopening for public participation, he suggested they could rotate and have some board members present for the meetings with others on Zoom.
Sabatier said he didn’t want to force board members to be in the environment, adding he wanted to to have a place for members of the public to go to express themselves.
The board ultimately reached consensus to bring the chambers reopening matter back for discussion next after Lake County has dropped into the red tier or the state comes up with other guidelines, with the mask requirement to be included.
The next board meeting takes place virtually on Feb. 23.
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Supervisors continue temporary rollback of in-person county services; board chambers to remain closed to public during meetings
- Elizabeth Larson
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