AH Council meeting

Craig Bakay | Mar 18, 2020

COVID-19 and how it pertains to municipal business dominated proceedings at Addington Highlands regular Council meeting Tuesday afternoon in Denbigh.

“That would be fair to say, yes,” said Dep. Reeve Tony Fritsch, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Reeve Henry Hogg, who was self-isolating because he’s just returned from a trip to South America that included stops in Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

“It was a great trip,” Hogg said in a separate phone call while he was waiting for a conference call on government plans and guidelines for conducting municipal business during the current crisis. “But I’ve still got a week of self-quarantine to go.”

But, as dominated by COVID-19 as the meeting was, Council did manage to get some business done.

“We distanced ourselves from each other,” Fritsch said. “But we did manage.

“We decided that our Township will compensate employees who were at home such as librarians and others whether we sent them home or they had to go home on their own.

“And the main thing is that we’re closing the municipal offices to the public until further notice but staff will be at work.”

He said they are in the process of developing a protocol as to how the Chief Building Official and Planning Secretary will interact with the public on a one-to-one basis when they need to.

“And there was discussion as to the hiring of a handy person position,” he said. “We discussed duties such as minor repair and things like painting.

“It will have no budget impact as those costs are already built-in to operating budgets for thing like halls.”

Finally, Fritsch said the budget meeting scheduled for March 19 has been deferred to the morning of April 7 (before the regularly scheduled Council meeting).

“That’s assuming the Council meeting goes ahead,” Fritsch said. “A lot can happen in that much time but we do need to conduct business.We’ll see how it all unfolds."