Marshfield Common Council Preparing Pandemic-Related Game Plan

Wednesday, August 11th, 2021 -- 12:01 PM

(WDLB) -Marshfield officials are once again putting their pandemic-related game plan together, should COVID-19 force more shutdowns this fall.

According to WDLB, the Common Council voted 10-0 last night in favor of giving City Administrator Steve Barg authorization to take emergency actions necessary to protect the health and safety of city employees and residents, by restricting access to city hall and other facilities and reinstating the use of remote meetings, if necessary. 

"The number of cases of COVID-19 is rising.  Wood County is now showing higher transmission levels happening right here.  The reality is that nothing has come down from the state."

"There's no mandate from the Governor's Office as their was once to take any type of action, so it's entirely in our control.  And I'm not suggesting there's anything on my mind in terms of taking some actions."

"But I think it's prudent, as we look at the Delta variant, as we look at cases growing, and what may happen this fall, that someone be empowered to make those decisions and take action on the spur of the moment if they're deemed necessary to protect public health and safety."

Alderman Tom Witzel made it clear there is no imminent threat, and there are no plans to shut things down any time soon.

"This is simply a tool in place should some future action down the road at some point be deemed appropriate.  I want to make sure the public knows that we're not closing city hall, we're not requiring masks.  We're simply having a tool in place."

Barg said he would continue to monitor the local situation to see if any emergency actions are warranted.

"Of course we have to abide by a mandate if one comes from Governor Evers, but it's really just monitoring constantly the data we're getting from Wood County Health Department, and other authorities, to see if we're moivng in that phase of the pandemic, which would be the third time for us now, that would mandate or...require...or warrant that type of action."

"I'm not looking to do something more than we need to, but, if conditions warrant, I think we need to have somebody in charge to make those calls.  We've had several of those that we had to do back in 2020.  One of those was to close access to this buidling for a period of time to protect the safety of our employees and the public."

"Particularly, those employees who are interacting with the public and becoming ill or having to quarantine.  We got to a point where it was getting a little difficult because we had many people unavailable as far as just running operations.  So, somebody needs to be able to make that call on a fairly short notice, if need be."

The Council added a stipulation restricting the City Administrator from imposing mandatory vaccinations for city employees.

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