Administration’s COVID Response, Based on Core Values, Has Ferndale Setting the Example
(Crystal A. Proxmire, June 5, 2020 )
Ferndale, MI – Streaming live from his children’s nursery like so many working-from-home parents, Ferndale City Manager Joe Gacioch shared how he and his team have adapted, innovated, and planned ahead in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
Scores of city, township, and village administrators and elected officials tuned in for a Michigan Municipal League webinar on April 29 to learn strategies to take back to their towns.
“We have to shift our mindset to not fall back to ‘normal’,” Gacioch said. “We have to prepare for the ‘new’ normal.”
Before diving into the decisions, the City Manager shared how important it was that the City’s values be at the core of every decision made, even in times of emergency.
CORE VALUES
Those values, he explained, are: integrity, innovation, inspiration, and inclusiveness.
Human resources is one area where the values helped guide decisions.
Throughout the state, cities have varied in how they have managed staff at a time when buildings are closed, and only essential workers should be leaving home for jobs. While some immediately laid off staff, Ferndale opted to adapt the roles of employees, and consciously keep people on payroll (though some with reduced hours), being productive, and staying connected as a team.
For some that’s meant being able to use their time working from home to develop their professional knowledge and skills, using time for education as logged work hours.
For others its mean a complete shift of duties, like those in the recreation department researching social-distance-safe activities and supporting a senior outreach program.
PREPARING TO REOPEN
While the timeline and the state regulations are unknown, the city has begun operating with some assumptions in regard to re-opening the economy.
Ferndale anticipates:
-The need for social distancing
-The need for personal protective equipment (like facemasks, shields, gloves, sanitizer)
-The need to follow and communicate state and county guidelines
-Health screenings and wellness checks.
City leaders laid out steps in the re-opening process. They also reached out to leaders in neighboring cities, so communities throughout SE Oakland County are making decisions in a coordinated way.
COORDINATION WITH NEIGHBORS
Ferndale Mayor Melanie Piana talked about the effort, and how working together can reduce problems. “Making sure a mayor in one city doesn’t undermine another city, or pit us against one another if our approaches are slightly different, or the timing is off,” she said.
The cities collaborated, for example, on announcing park closures and event cancellations on the same day. That way when residents in a city learned of closures in a neighboring city they wouldn’t have to wonder for long about the events or closures in theirs.
On a larger scale, conversations and trainings through the Michigan Municipal League have led to collaborations and innovations. “Every idea is on the table,” Piana said in praise of the League’s resources through the crisis.
STEPS TO REOPENING
Ferndale’s approach, in line with neighboring cities, has four main steps.
The first is how to open City Hall. We checked with Gacioch for the latest on this today, to which he responded “We plan to partially reopen City Hall for city staff on Monday, June 15th. I expect to give our internal team a few weeks to reacclimate to the office environment and some of the public-health related changes that we’ve made to the building and staffing policy. It’s critical that the public is comfortable interacting with the building, and for the public to be comfortable, our staff must be comfortable too. I expect to reopen to the public for limited hours the week of July 6th.”
For Ferndale’s staff, all eyes are on the customer experience – making sure it is safe, that it is easy for visitors to understand, and that people feel safe when they come in (for example will they see employees keeping safe distance and wearing masks).
Step two is opening public parks. The ban on playground equipment has been lifted, and cities still have a lot to consider. Recommended questions include: When that is allowed, how will cleanliness be maintained, and how will the public feel safe? How will the city prepare equipment? What will the sanitation protocols be? What signage is needed? How will social distancing be encouraged?
Ferndale administration has identified “sanitation point of presence” as a priority. Gacioch said the idea is that city workers will be visible to the public doing jobs such as emptying trash and cleaning equipment during the day so the public will know that the city is working hard for them. And because all city staff are being kept in the loop with information, they’ll be prepared when people have questions.
Step three is the reopening and support of the downtown. While the Downtown Development Authority and the City has already been working with business owners to identify funding sources and other support, there is more to be done as openings approach.
Questions officials should be asking, according to Gacioch, are: How do we support our businesses? How do we have a sanitization presence? How do we help businesses be proactive about social distancing?
The DDA and City have worked together to develop a crowd-source program to fund PPE for downtown small businesses and the DDA Board authorized contracted human resources support to aid small businesses that are navigating challenging personnel decisions and different federal relief programs.
There is also a taskforce that includes the City, the DDA, the Mayor’s Business Council, and the Ferndale Area Chamber of Commerce. The DDA has launched promotions such as Social Distancing BINGO and a Boss Moms campaign to support mother-owned businesses at Mothers Day.
Our downtown is an important part of our community’s identity. The shops, restaurants, the people, and the homes that hug the downtown are part of the composite that make up this special place. Supporting our businesses means supporting our community – Figuratively, we can huddle closer together in times of crisis distancing ourselves physically. Step four is revitalizing arts and culture in the community. The cancellation of events such as the Memorial Day Parade, Woodward Dream Cruise and Ferndale Pride had been heart-breaking for community members.
“The public will be hungry for safe, stimulating activity,” Gacioch said. “How can we replace the events we may be losing?”
Another idea the city is exploring is how to engage young people who may not be going away to college this year. “If students don’t come to campus, how will that impact your community? He said. “And is there talent we might engage such as internships or a local civil corps program?”
Along the lines of fostering talent, Mason City Manager Deborah Stuart urged elected officials and administrators to be mindful of where their employees are at. She talked about the potential stresses, such as balancing home schooling with worth, working from home in a busy place or with limited computer use time or bandwidth, dealing with fear, illness, isolation, family member concerns, and maybe even the deaths of people they know. “We may be ready to move forward, but our employees may not be,” Stuart said.
INNOVATING AND PRACTICING
For those who are ready though, a crisis can be a time to learn and grow.
“I really wanted to stress the importance of adaptive leadership during the time of navigating the crisis and as we approach the recovery period, I’m very thankful that the culture Ferndale has created is this agile organizational approach to responding to the pandemic,” said Mayor Piana. “It has been messy, and clucky…and what we’ve been focusing on…is really about recalibration, improvisation, some risk taking, and some rapid innovation.”
City Manager Stuart also shared some practical advice when she recommended that other city admins make sure that staff runs through processes multiple times before being finalized and put in practice for the public. Examples would be how the public moves through a City of Village hall, or how to institute the mandatory health checks as employees enter the building. “They sound good on paper but they may not be as smooth in practice,” she said.
The takeaways of preparation, innovation, value-driven decision-making, and working together can help make sure local governments are doing their best for everyone in the communities who rely on their work.
The webinar was one of many resources shared by the Michigan Municipal League about COVID-19 and the ways it impacts local governments. Check out their collection at Michigan Municipal League’s Coronavirus Resources website.