Madison City Channel
Priority number one for County Executive Joe Parisi and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway: limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Our community is preparing for a wave of infections the magnitude of which is still unknown. City, county and state government officials have taken unprecedented action to stave off the spread of the coronavirus, the ultimate wrath of which we are only beginning to understand. The immediate concern is to ease the inevitable spread of the virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, so the healthcare system doesn’t become overwhelmed.
The effort by Madison and Dane County is multipronged: batten down the hatches of life as we know it, keep the essential wheels of government turning, then reckon with the devastating financial undertow that will likely hit our most vulnerable neighbors the hardest. Just a week ago, closing schools, offices, libraries, restaurants, bars and malls still seemed unlikely. Now most cities in the country are shutting down. We are told to isolate ourselves yet we suffer together. Welcome to the new normal.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway say current efforts focus on impacting the trajectory of the coronavirus. There were three confirmed cases of coronavirus in Dane County on March 11. A week later, there were 23. There are 106 cases confirmed statewide as of March 18. The number of cases is expected to rise, especially when testing becomes more widely available.
“The virus will have a cycle: It will increase, it will peak, it will decline, and it will level off. We feel that we’ve been very aggressive upfront and believe that will pay off,” Parisi told Isthmus on March 16. “The measures that have been put in place, we were going to have to put in place eventually…. The sooner we did it, hopefully the sooner we’ll be on the other side of this.”
The other side could be months away. Rhodes-Conway says “it’s a crisis moment” with no precedent.
“We are not only dealing with what’s right in front of us in terms of what’s happening with [the spread of coronavirus], but we’re also planning 24 hours, two days, a week, a month out, to prepare for what we expect to be coming,” the mayor told Isthmus on March 14. “We are trying to follow the best science and the best guidance from public health…. If we are overprepared, that’s great.”
Local and state health officials announced March 17 that new cases of coronavirus in Dane County and other Wisconsin counties “indicate community spread,” meaning there is “no known source of the disease, such as recent contact with an infected person or travel from an area with a high number of cases.”
As a result, Gov. Tony Evers prohibited public and private gatherings of 10 or more people with few exceptions. Everyone is being told to work from home. Schools could be closed beyond initial estimates of April 6. UW-Madison has canceled in-person classes for the rest of the semester.
“When you look at the curve [of the virus] in other countries, it’s lasted several months,” says Parisi. “Everything that we can do both organizationally and individually to lessen the spread of this virus is incredibly important.”
Rhodes-Conway says the city will maintain core services “as long as possible.”
“That includes the transportation system, of course public safety, also things like trash pickup,” she says. “We also need to make sure that at least some of our functions come back before too long, so that we keep the city going.”
When will things feel normal again?
“We don’t know at this point. That’s why more extensive testing is critical,” says Parisi. “That’s obviously one of the places where the federal government has really fallen down.”
Rhodes-Conway says a return to reality could be a year away, maybe more.
“I think we’ll come back to something that looks a lot more like normal sooner than that,” says the mayor. “But if you’re talking about how long before we have a vaccine, a possible treatment, how long before the mental health impacts will pass? It’s a long time.”
Many city and county agencies are already closed to the public. “Walk-up counter service” for routine city business has been suspended. Olbrich Botanical Gardens and community centers are closed. Farmers’ markets have been cancelled. Parking meters will no longer need to be plugged. Starting March 20, Madison Metro will run buses on the reduced Saturday schedule except for campus routes and service to Epic Systems.
Animals at the Henry Vilas Zoo haven’t seen a child’s face since March 14. At the Dane County Jail, family visits have been canceled and all programming activities have ceased. Many defendants won’t have their day in court until at least April 17.
City and county employees, whose positions allow it, will work from home, which has IT departments working overtime to supply equipment and training on how to conduct meetings remotely.
“It’s all hands on deck,” says Boyce Johnson, the city’s digital media coordinator.
Greg Mickells, director of Madison Public Library, says eight of the city’s nine libraries unexpectedly had to close on March 16 due to lack of staff. Had that ever happened before?
“Never,” says Mickells. “It was just one of those kind of perfect storm moments with everything that’s happening. I think a lot of our parents that work for us were kind of caught off guard and didn’t have childcare arrangements.”
On March 17, all Madison libraries were shuttered until further notice.
The Common Council voted that night to suspend much of its policy-making role during the crisis. Unless authorized by the mayor and the council president, most committee meetings will be prohibited. Only the Common Council, Finance, Plan, Public Works, and a few other committees will continue to meet to keep the city running.
Ald. Grant Foster objected to the unprecedented measure to restrict the council’s role in governance, but was largely alone in raising concerns. Alders overwhelmingly passed the ordinance on a voice vote.
Rhodes-Conway agreed with Foster that the language of the ordinance was “imperfect” and said she supported immediately repealing it once the crisis was over. But she said staff normally assigned to work with city committees are needed in other areas of government right now.
“We can’t bring everything to a halt forever,” said Rhodes-Conway. “But we do need to put everything on pause right now.”
What can’t be paused is the upcoming April 7 election, which includes the Wisconsin presidential primary, a state Supreme Court race and school board contests. Typically, the city’s libraries are utilized to accommodate early voting but it’s unclear whether those facilities will reopen before the election. Calls for social distancing mean absentee ballots are pouring into the City Clerk’s Office. Some city staff are being reassigned to that office as well as to the joint city-county health department.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint...maybe an ultra-marathon,” Rhodes-Conway said at the March 17 executive committee meeting. She told council members they should start preparing for dealing with the aftermath of the crisis and the looming economic pain about to be felt.
“I hope that [alders], individually and collectively, can help us think, six months, a year, two years from now, what do we need to be doing? What is our community going to look like? And how do we get back to a place where we want to be rather than one where we are stuck?”
Local government officials are pulling out all the stops without knowing who will pick up the bill. But they are also limited in their ability to respond to businesses forced to shut down, which will leave potentially thousands of people in our community without a paycheck. The measures intended to protect us from the rapid spread of the coronavirus will leave an ugly economic scar.
“I certainly realize how difficult this is for everyone. But we do need to be patient,” says Parisi. “We need to look out for one another. We need to advocate to the federal government and the state government for help and relief for the folks who are impacted the greatest economically.”
Madison has announced efforts to help provide childcare for “medical personnel, protective service members and essential city services staff.” The city is also offering an additional two weeks of sick pay for city employees affected by the virus. And the city is partnering with the Madison school district to feed students, a program that usually doesn’t start until the summer.
“One thing we need from the federal government is the assurance that when we use up all of our funding for summer meals that they’re going to come back and give us more funding [for the summer],” says Rhodes-Conway.
Parisi says he expects Uncle Sam to step in, but to what extent remains unknown.
“At this point, we can’t count on [the federal government] coming in and making us whole. We do feel they have a responsibility to help us with this,” says Parisi. “But we also have to, potentially, take measures that are within our control to make sure that we’re able to be financially healthy in the long run.”
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported this week that the governor and the GOP-controlled Legislature are in early talks about “providing emergency funding for hospitals, clinics, unemployment services and other areas affected by the spread of the coronavirus.” However, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) wants to wait to see how Trump’s proposed $1 trillion relief package pans out in Congress.
Rhodes-Conway says there are some actions only the state can take.
“The city is specifically preempted from...requiring paid or earned sick leave in the private sector,” Rhodes-Conway told the executive council. “I certainly hope that they are working on that.”
When asked what keeps her up at night, Rhodes-Conway laughs and says, “Everything.”
“But everybody is pulling together. This just reinforces for me what an excellent city staff we have and how grateful I am for our local government partners and institutions around the community,” says the mayor. “It’s not my worries that keep me up. It’s the list of things that I need to remember to do.”
Editor's note: Developments relating to COVID-19 are evolving quickly. Please note that any information in this article is subject to change.
