Like most municipalities in the region and around the globe, the Town of Ulster is continuing to monitor the latest on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic while trying to safely and effectively keep essential services up and running.
Town Supervisor James Quigley III on Tuesday credited Deputy Supervisor John Morrow and Councilman Clayton VanKleeck, along with Town Clerk Suzanne Reavy and assistant Margaret King, for keeping Town Hall running as smoothly as possible during his own period of self-quarantine. Quigley returned from Mexico on Saturday, March 14, and for the sake of caution decided to set up a remote office from his house for two weeks before returning to Town Hall.
“I have been doing work from my basement office with four computers and two cell phones,” he said.
For the Town of Ulster Police Department, Quigley said that beyond extra safety measures, they’re continuing to serve the community as always.
“We’ve cautioned them on making traffic stops, that now is not the time to be writing speeding tickets because you don’t know what you may end up catching besides the speeder,” Quigley said.
As of Tuesday, March 24, the plan was for all Town of Ulster employees to continue working, though that will be in accordance with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mandate that by Monday, March 23, all nonessential workforce staff were required to work from home. Quigley said they’re managing that by splitting the non-police segment of the essential workforce into two teams; depending upon which department they work for, they work on alternating schedules, either daily or weekly. The weekly shift is largely focused in the town court, as each town justice has their own clerk.
Quigley added anyone coming to Town Hall sees a list of telephone numbers for different departments, with visitors and employees screened by a security guard who checks their temperature.
“We have turned away people who for religious reasons have refused to have the temperature taken,” Quigley said. “That is a safety precaution. We don’t like doing that, but that is what the times require.”
Quigley said that as of Friday, March 20, all employees were issued current ID cards, with those considered essential given laminated orange placards with the Town of Ulster seal and the words “essential employee” in case the situation worsens to the point where transit has to be controlled.
“We’ve done this for all the fire companies so that the volunteers can respond, and we’ve helped out some other towns that have needs to implement the same procedures,” Quigley said. “If it comes to a total lockdown, the Town still needs to maintain the water and sewer plants, we need to maintain Police and Fire protection. And in order to do that people are going to have to show up and be able to show up.”
Elsewhere, much of Town Hall’s business outside of the general running of the municipality has been devoted to answering questions from the public, though Quigley said those calls have come in less frequently than they were a week ago.
“We’ve had a number of phone calls from constituents throughout the town concerned about the financial impacts about the situation on them and how it relates to various obligations they have to the community,” he said. “But we have gotten a tremendous decrease in traffic in town hall including telephone traffic. It’s not widespread this concern, but it is out there and we’ve been trying to be proactive by taking steps and making announcements before people face deadlines.”
Quigley said that deadlines within control of the municipality are being extended to allow residents who might be financially impacted by the pandemic more time to pay their bills. Water and sewer bills, for instance, have seen their deadline extended a month to May 31; those bills can currently be paid by check or credit card online with a small fee, or by paying via a lockbox on the front of Town Hall using an envelope with the resident’s name on it.
As they continue to monitor the spread of COVID-19, the Town will continue serving its residents as best as possible. The business of running a municipality can’t completely shut down Quigley said, and while the nature of important meetings will change for the time being, they will, for the most part, continue. A town board meeting held on Thursday, March 19 was closed to the public in person, but was recorded on both audio and video to allow the community to watch and/or listen. A town board meeting scheduled for Thursday, April 2 has been canceled, but a meeting two weeks later is still scheduled to proceed as planned. The next zoning board of appeals (Wednesday, April 8) and planning board (Tuesday, April 14) are also still on as of press time.
Quigley said he’s hoping increasingly stricter rules about movement and interaction in the face of the coronavirus will help flatten the curve, but he said he would have liked to see the pandemic taken more seriously and sooner.
“Quite frankly I don’t think they were dramatic enough early enough just stop the spread,” Quigley said. “I’m in the school of thought where we should have shut it down sooner and harder. And yes, that would have created hardship on the residents. But I believe that having shut it down sooner and harder it would have saved lives. And when it comes down to government’s role, it’s about people’s lives.”
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