Municipalities Seize The Day

Connecticut’s towns and cities adapt on the fly to save lives

On March 8, the first coronavirus case was reported in the state of Connecticut. In just over 50 days’ time, there would be nearly 30,000 cases. There is no way to overstate the impact COVID-19 has had on our daily lives. Measuring the response is easier thanks to the quick action of municipal leaders. According to Data Haven, nearly 20,000 lives will have been saved because of the social distancing measures put in place. From aiding small businesses to Zoom budget meetings, municipalities have shown their ingenuity in the fight against coronavirus.

It didn’t take long after the first reported case for municipalities to swing into action. This included making some hard decisions along the way. Perhaps the first action taken in Connecticut was to cancel the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New Haven. It is one of the ten longest running St. Patrick’s Day Parades in America, so this was no small matter.

In a statement, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said, “the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of New Haven’s important community and historical events, and it is with great disappointment that we need to postpone the event. Given the thousands of out of town visitors for the parade and the number of first-responders that are required to staff the parade, we have assessed that the risks of potential community spread—and significant impacts that would have on the region and our first responders—merit the decision to postpone the parade.”

Response efforts began to ramp up from there. Being so close to New York and the first major outbreak in New Rochelle, Fairfield County was the first area to respond to the viral threat.

On March 11, Westport First Selectman Jim Marpe held a news conference outlining how the town was going to respond. He issued a statement that he would be closing down Westport Public Schools, the Town Hall, Westport Center for Senior Activities, and the Parks & Recreation Department to eliminate the possibility of additional transmission. Within days, dozens of municipalities would make similar announcements.

Soon, a flurry of executive orders by Governor Ned Lamont would be announced during daily briefings. The initial executive order (EO 7), prohibited gatherings of more than 250 people, but each new order added a new level of safety and security. Consulting with CCM and municipal leaders, many of these orders responded to needs of municipalities, and on March 14, EO 7B suspended in-person open meeting requirements for municipalities.

This required towns and cities to get creative. Thanks to decades of innovations in technology, conferencing tools have allowed people to join meetings no matter where they were. One such platform, called Zoom, became a go-to tool for municipalities that wanted to keep their government moving, including ensuring public participation.

On March 17, the town of Andover announced they would be hold their first remote meeting the very next day, just three days after EO 7B, and just 10 days after the first case in Connecticut.

First Selectman Jeffrey Maguire told the Journal Inquirer, “with the governor’s executive order banning meetings, we are trying to prepare so that in the future we can have these meetings in virtual space and make them productive. If it goes well, then we’ll continue to do it, if it goes poorly, we’ll try to figure out what we did wrong and do it better.”

It was back on March 17 that EO 7E waived the 180-day requirement on schools which opened the possibility that schools would not be returning at all for the end of the 19-20 school year. Municipal leaders worked with their boards of education and non-profit institutions to make sure that learning could continue at home.

Hartford handed out nearly 10,000 laptops to families that did not have access to a computer. This is a major concern in some areas of the state where many children do not have the ability to transition to learn from home. Partnership for CT working with the State and municipalities put in an order for 60,000 laptops, which were distributed to schools in Alliance Districts.

Only one month after issuing his first executive order in response to the crisis, Governor Lamont had exhausted all the letters of the alphabet in his addendums. From March 12 to April 14, the number of cases jumped from 6 to 13,989, and, sadly, nearly 700 deaths.

Municipal leaders have become crucial disseminators of information during this crisis. One of our most oft cited polls is that Americans trust local leaders more than any other group of elected officials. That Pew Center poll also said that local elected officials offer fair and accurate information to the public.

Mayor Joe Ganim of Bridgeport added the job duties of “amateur afternoon talk show host,” according to the Connecticut Post for his briefings that take place on Facebook Live, fighting to remain a beacon of normalcy in these difficult times.

They’ve also become truth-tellers. Mayor Erin Stewart took to her social media outlets to help dispel rumors that had begun to swirl around New Britain, including one that said an entire hotel was quarantined. In addressing those rumors, she emphasized the need for good, critical information citing the Federal Government’s CDC 15 days to slow the spread campaign.

On March 31, the federal guidelines changed that figure to 30 days to slow the spread as more information came to light and testing increased throughout the state. Towns and cities did not necessarily wait for guidance from the state or federal government to do what they knew to be the next steps. In fact, they were leading the way most of the time.

Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling took the lead on on social distancing in grocery stores by halving the existent maximum occupancy numbers just days before the policy was made state-wide in Governor Lamont’s EO 7S. New Haven and Hamden began requiring face masks just over a week before they became mandatory in the state. Executive Order 7BB ordering masks to be worn in public took effect on April 20, nearly 6 weeks after the first reported case. Within a week of this order, the cases began to stabilize and the number of hospitalizations would begin to decrease.

Towns and cities across the state began to think about what it means to re-open. Businesses have suffered, most retail outlets are not considered essential services and most restaurants have relied upon takeout orders just to stay afloat. Middletown Mayor Ben Florsheim took the extraordinary step of looking into loans for local businesses that would help bridge the gap.

As CT&C went to press, Connecticut began the reopening of the economy with a limited amount of businesses on May 20.

Municipal leaders have taken every precaution in the fight against the spread of coronavirus. With the DataHaven estimates that nearly 20,000 fewer deaths than would have been expected without any of the measures put in place and enforced by municipalities, you can extrapolate the infections prevented in a full third of Connecticut’s population of 3.5 million. That’s nearly one-million people who did not get coronavirus. This is an extraordinary achievement.