Message From County Administrator
Published: June 10, 2020
Dear County Employees,
On Friday, June 5, 2020 the Public Health Officer issued Public Health Order C19-14 allowing for more opportunities to work and play outside our homes. This week, the Board of Supervisors will discuss moving into Stage Three of the State Reopening Guidelines as part of the COVID-19 Threat, Response, Reopening and Recovery Update at the June 11, 2020 special meeting, which includes restaurants, bars and wineries, campgrounds, hotels, museums, and other long-awaited businesses. As always, regulation changes must be guided by the epidemiological picture, but we anticipate Sonoma County will move into Stage Three later this month.
As our community expands its movement, so do County on-site activities. Throughout the next few weeks, we will re-open office lobbies that have been closed to the public, with at least 20 on-site hours available for community clients by July 6th. Of course, “re-opening” is a misnomer - we were never fully closed. Eighty eight percent of our employees are currently working, and 45 percent of those are working on-site. Within this complex organization, every one of our departments creatively adjusted their processes and transformed the way they work in order to uphold our civic safety net. Thank you for keeping us afloat.
We must now expand on-site services in order to continue effectively serving this community, which urgently needs us. For many of you, this is business as usual; for others, it means returning to your desk for the first time in months. Departments have been collaborating with key stakeholders including public health experts and Human Resources Risk Management. Employee & Labor Relations and department safety coordinators have been sharing and reviewing re-entry mitigation plans with union representatives as well. We are enacting new hygiene and physical safety protocols across the organization to minimize interaction risks, with more sparsely spread workspaces, face coverings, and front counter barriers. And, we are asking you to transform yourselves yet again, with daily health screenings, attentive office equipment disinfecting, and other measures designed to protect you, your colleagues and the public.
In the coming weeks your department leadership and managers will share your team’s specific on-site plan, and I encourage you to raise any questions with your manager, Human Resources representative, or union representative. Your flexibility and commitment under stress is a tremendous credit that represents the best of what we can accomplish, and an honor to our community.
Stay Strong
Sheryl
Sheryl Bratton
County Administrator