The City of North Battleford continues its work implementing protocols to protect staff and council during the COVID-19 crisis, such as holding meetings online. This week's council meeting was held via Zoom. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)  

By Angela Brown

Taking precautions

City gives update on operations plans during COVID-19 situation

Apr 17, 2020 | 3:37 PM

The City of North Battleford is following a comprehensive strategy as part of its planning work to fortify operations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

City manager Randy Patrick said in his report to council “COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on our society and city operations… The safety of our staff is paramount, and the city has taken numerous steps to reduce or spread out occurrences of the virus within the workplace.”

He said the city has found “creative ways to implement social distancing,” with some staff working from home, increased spacing in facilities and splitting staff into different work teams.

The city separated its administration team – with half working from City Hall and the remainder from the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) based at the North Battleford Airport. This way it is able to follow the province’s safety precautions for COVID-19 and also help the city be more resilient.

The North Battleford Fire Department has double-downed on its strategy to reduce the risk of its members becoming affected by the virus.

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The fire department is now working on a rotation of 48-hour shifts, instead of 12-hour shifts. Now each shift will run 48 hours continuously; then, the members on that shift have six days off after that.

“That is to ensure during those six days off if they start to develop symptoms of COVID-19 they could identify that and not come back to work,” Mayor Ryan Bater said. “This is really about segregating our city into units in order to contain the potential spread of the virus.”

Plans ask for paid on-call firefighters not to visit the Fire Hall unless they are called for a fire, to maintain a separate grouping of available firefighters.

The RCMP detachment has implemented its own pandemic plans as well.

The North Battleford’s Community Safety Officer (CSO) operations have been reduced, Patrick said in his report. The CSO officers have been moved into two separate shifts so there is less chance of transmission between officers.

Road crews are now split between two separate parts of the city.

“We just want to contain the possible spread of the virus, so we don’t have too many staff interacting with each other,” Mayor Bater said.

In addition, North Battleford council members are separated to follow safety protocols – recognizing social distancing by staying at least two metres away from others, and ensuring no more than 10 individuals gather in one place. For this week’s Zoom live-stream meeting, councillors and the mayor, and several city staff participated online from separate locations, while the city manager and the legislative services director took part from City Hall. Online meetings will continue during the COVID-19 situation.

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow