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