Commissioner Starkey Hosts 2nd Pasco Public Services Virtual Town Hall (4.24.20)

thank all of you for taking the time to speak to Pasco County citizens discussion topics today will include updates on kovat 19 and information on resources at the local and federal level along with steps the county is taking slowly reopened so in this order well this is our order we're going to start with Mike Napier from the the Health Department then we'll have Jerome's Saladino from career source Pasco County Assistant County Administrator Kathy Pearson Marge Marcy s burg for our community development director Keith Wylie our director of Pasco Parks Recreation and Natural Resources Major James mallow from the Pasco Sheriff's Office will be discussing the census and then our County Administrator Dan miles will be joining us at the end afterwards we will have a brief question and answer following our speakers discussion so I'm we've received some questions already but if you want to email in during during our virtual town hall please email them to d-danny McAuliffe which is d MC au I think we'll have it up here on the slide right at Pasco County FL dotnet and if we don't get your questions answered today we'll follow up with you afterward and once we circle back with staff we also we will also send you the PowerPoint information and a link to the Town Hall to those who email in and a recording of today's Town Hall will be available on the Pasco County government YouTube channel after today so my office is is publishing a daily Cove in 19 newsletter that is a great resource for information if you'd like to sign up for this newsletter please contact the same in email that's listed here on this slide and then just quickly we've launched the front line appreciation group and Pasco this is uh you can see there are our sign that we hand out to our some of our donors what we are doing is raising money that will go to feed the frontline folks working in the hospitals and we we use the money well the money goes to local restaurants smaller mom-and-pop restaurants typically who could really use that extra boost as well so I'm really excited that the county is participating in this program it's Flag 2020 Pasco and you can find us on Facebook so we've already donated to two hospitals we donated to North Bay and to the hospital in Dade City and tonight we will be donating to the Zephyrhills to the hospital in Zephyrhills and then we thank everyone who has participated in that program and so now let us turn over to Mike Napier our director of Health for Pasco County Thank You Commissioner Starkey for inviting me to come and speak about Kovac activities in Pasco County my name is Myton apear I'm the health officer for the Florida Department of Health in Pasco County first I want to speak about the services we provide at the Health Department and how we've changed some of those services I do this for two reasons actually the first is to let you know how we can serve you but

secondly I want to give you ideas of how you might be able to change how you do business to limit kovat exposure we have a hundred and eighty staff that work at the health department and nearly 50 people that are teleworking working from home to avoid their exposure I want to give a big shout out to my staff and thank them for all the hard work they've done and the amount of flexibility that it's taken to be able to make sure we continue to be able to provide services to our community but also to make sure they're safe at home we're still offering most of our services however we've adjusted the way in which we provide those services for example we've limited face-to-face interaction with our clients instead we providing services via telephone and only requiring people to come in if it's absolutely necessary in those cases we are very meticulous every step of the way to ensure minimal contact and exposure and maximum safety for our client in our employees our eliminated services include vital statistics clinical services children's emergency dental WIC and environmental health clients can get Florida birth certificates and death circuits from vital statistics but we encourage them to call first so that we can talk to the clients and discuss the best way for them to get their certificates and avoid the face-to-face contact all of our clinic services including family planning are still available but they've been temporarily modified so that visits can be conducted over the phone our new port richey clinic hours are Monday Wednesday and Friday in Dade City is Tuesday and Thursday both are telework only from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. if needed exams vaccinations medication pickup and STD testing will be scheduled between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. at Wesley Chi and Wesley Chapel clinic is closed quick that many people are becoming more and more familiar with is still serving clients Monday through Friday in Dade City Wesley Chapel Hudson and New Port Richey clients will receive services including breastfeeding assistance over the phone or online whenever possible but new clients will have to be served in their cars when they come to the health department our children's dental clinics are open for urgent care only one day a week New Port Richey is open on Tuesday from eight to five and eight cities open on Wednesday from 8:00 to 5:00 please call anytime if your children has a dental emergency and lastly on the services we provide environmental health we're also conducting routine inspections of facilities that remain open but we continue to follow up on complaints and sanitary nuisance now I'd like to tell you more about the health department's role in the cove at nineteen response the CDC is our go-to for guidance on the response to kovat I encourage you also to use the CDC for guidance their website is CDC gov and there's a lot of information on many different topics topics that you wouldn't think of but if you google on their CDC site they will be able to help

you the health department works in a unified command structure with a Pasco Emergency Operations Center to coordinate our kovat 19 response the Florida Department of Health and Pasco government are working hand-in-hand to bring this pandemic to an end we're coordinating and sharing messaging with a county to get correct information out the sheriff's office has provided messaging and assistance with enforcing the safer at home order our epidemiologist that I have to say I'm very proud of in a Health Department work with hospitals long-term care facilities urgent care centers and other medical and testing facilities to identify monitor and track all positive kovat 19 cases let me tell you a little bit about how that happens once a positive case is identified our epic team contacts the individual and asked about their activities and people they've come in contact with based on that information follow-up calls are made to those possible contacts information is gathered and recommendations are provided to those individuals as well a tracking system is used to compile this information and determine trends in our community normally this is a 24/7 operation man by for staff in the health department however in the last few weeks we've ramped up and have a total of 25 people working on contact tracing as we know contract tracing is a huge component in resolving our kovat 19 cases some statistics people like that statistics we have had nearly 5,000 tests that have been performed as of today not quite 5000 but almost of those 229 cases have tested positive that's less than a 5% rate of testing versus positive incidents the state of Florida is 10 percent so we're well below the state average of positive cases many of you are tracking the numbers on a daily basis how many did we have yesterday how many do we have today today we've had nine cases positive cases which in the past we've been doing pretty well with 4 to 5 cases I want to point out that of those nine cases four of those were in one family in other words the the parent got sick and the three siblings and the spouse was sick so it's not out into the community it was in within a household so those numbers don't tell the full picture all the another number is is that out of the 200 in in 29 cases we have a hundred and seventy four people that have have been removed from isolation the message to that story is most people virtually all the people resolved after they've been sick some interesting statistics from April 1st to April 3rd the the three days of 1st in April we had a highest daily positive count with a 15 12 and 16 respectively on those days for this past week we've averaged 5 cases so we're making progress early in the Cova 19 response most of our cases were related to travel from known hotspots then positive cases transitioned exposures to known cases with a large portion of those being household contacts spouses children and siblings the health department provides

reemployment assistance right there how back in march 7th we're looking at about 114 and now we're up around over 4,000 our peaks of ours March 28 close to 5,000 people a week looking for information looking for help with you know services that we provide also services that the county provides how they can access funds how they can access just information in general we're trying to field all those calls the best we can it is definitely a huge increase for us we are a little bit under staff to be honest with you and it's something that no one's expected and we're doing I think a very good job trying to manage that and we will always try to do the right thing and help anyone out to meet needs some assistance or information I will say that one of the big things because the unemployment insurance or the reemployment insurance it's something that's very much the hot topic nowadays there's been a lot of issues with the state system which has been well publicized I would highly suggest if you already have an application online that you do not send in a new form you do not send in a paper one you do not go ahead and try to resubmit because that has actually caused quite a bit of problems for individuals if you have sent something in and unfortunately cannot get ahold of the Department of Economic Opportunity at their 1-800 number please give us a call email us go to our live chat and we can do some research for you and try to help find out where it is if you know we cannot access the information we can even try to reach people at this stage we don't have a magic number or anything like that that we could share with anyone I wish we did but we do have access buing access on file so we can try to help determine what might be happening with a delay a lot of people probably heard that let's see problems that have been going on with the unemployment claim system but only about roughly right now I think the last number I saw was about 18 percent of the individuals that have actually filed have actually received any sort of funding that is a huge you know huge problem I know the state is working on it various ways everything from adding servers and people to help process the application to even having a taper application if someone has not filled out a paper paper application the states suggest that you do you know your your application electronically but I will tell you from what we have been hearing from people in the community that have file that it seems to go a little smoother and a little quicker if you fill out a paper application you can access that the best place to access that would actually be at the I think it's the third link down there which is the COBIT 19.4 to job org and you can access the paper the electronic version again not necessarily endorsing it I'm just letting everyone know that the individuals that we have been helping seem to be being processed a little bit faster their claims are going through a little quicker and I don't know why that would be again we don't have all that

information ourselves we're just trying to do some research and help out the best we can with it I do think that you know fortunately the state is moving forward it is just very slow they are looking to actually back date claims for people they are going to go back I believe to March 9th now and the federal assistance the stimulus dollars did you hear that not accessible yet for individuals in our state especially those people that are part of a gigabyte economy those people that are independent contractors that has not been set up with the state yet they are still trying to get all that done but hopefully it's in a very near future that additional $600 a week will go with what is considered a maximum of $275 in half so about 275 but the $600 plus to that amount and you know will go ahead and be at it in for an individual so there's a lot of information fortunate lotta that we are not really privy to much more than the general public right now what we hear from the state is what is being you know publicized where we can benefit people as we can actually maybe look into the systems and try to help guide you so if individuals are looking at are feeling frustrated or are just needing someone to talk to about it again we can maybe delve a little deeper and find a way to get some more information for you all thanks very much true Jim Moore okay that's great information for our residents I was talking to someone this morning who has a hair salon that closed a month ago and neither she the owner or any of her employees have been able to get through it's been four weeks so okay well we're gonna move on to a Pasco assistant County Administrator Cathy Pierson hi Cathy good afternoon everybody I just started to like in his group from the Health Department you have been phenomenal and thank you for all you've been doing over this I may say thank you to the Board of County Commissioners for their wonderful support in the 27 plus employees I've been just working their tails off so thank you all and our Sheriff's Department for keeping us safe so with that we wanted to talk about things that are we have a couple of other members from our public services brand but I'm going to cover the senior services and veterans right now I'll seek services as people know our congregate dining our senior centers have been closed so doing drive-thru me want to pick them up for a senior 60 and over and we've also been doing are continuing our home McNiel or promise that we partnered with our Area Agency on Aging house compass and we launched a program called the dining out program we watched that yesterday which using local restaurants to prepare meals and don't we have to pray to those seniors we started off with 27 I believe I think today I think it was 31 and so the numbers are gonna start decline totally for this whole program with the senior centers and all that we've done 21,000

meals and it was still looking for restaurants for the east side of the county so if anybody's listening out there there's an email up their dining up a a PP please send them e-mail they are the qualifications for our restaurant for us and for those those 60 or over listening it would like a meal you can contact our our Senior Services Group at 72 7 8 3 4 3 3 4 0 so that is a great want to shout out to race they donate thousand dollars we've been able blooood petite brunette essentials that we're using to give to our seniors as they're driving through and home delivered meals still continue 22 distribute our seniors so thank you to them services we are still taking but still available public TV a financial relief actions and time limit extensions veteran sky's ones and let you all know that if you are receiving compensation and pay attention when payments from the VA you will be 100 impacting stimulus payment I believe after April 24th if people not received yours already today so you this two numbers up there our central office and our West office if you want to punch their friends central number is 8 1 3 9 2 to 7 in our West one two seven eight three four three two services I did want to cover animal services out there with service animals we are down like do something animals those are opting our citizens have been adopting animals so we think what should I huh we still have 20-something animals looking for a home and by appointment website WWF as go Thursday Friday Saturday 12 to 6:30 so options Lost and Found pet licensing vaccine clinic right now you are still out there do an emergency or high priority calls was lying seven to seven after hours you can call 7 to 7 8 7 8 0 2 from 5 p.m. and our program for cats has been temporarily suspended - printed unemployment forms available at all branches right you can pick up so if you don't have access to a computer to print those please come by our brain we have reforms for you speak it might be click away team also under know that what you know they still ask like green features on the web we're still doing our marketing efforts you can still apply every parent to make life available in the parking lots even though the buildings are closed and every staff continually update the website will provide free resources for kids family students job seekers so with that I think the next one might be the Marcia Keith yep thanks Kathy that was a lot of good information next we're gonna turn to Marcie s Burke who was our Community Development Director good morning Marcie I guess it's good afternoon yes good afternoon thanks so much for including us in this town hall and the opportunity to get the information out to our citizens of Pasco County so the work that we are doing our department works primarily with look moderate-income citizens of Pasco County in the area because homeless initiatives neighborhood revitalization affordable housing and community partnerships and we are very anxious to be assisting

people in the interim before they get their employment insurance or get back to work so we realize this is a really difficult time for so many of our citizens and because of that we one of the areas that we do a lot of work in is working with our home owners either becoming homeowners or helping them maintain their homes with with home we rehabilitation dollars so we have offered and will continue to offer a deferral of payments on any mortgages that we have done through Community Development and we've made this very easy our citizens the ones that we hold mortgages with can go ahead and just go right online and fill out a deferral form and we are deferring all payments until the end of June then we recognize that there are a lot people out there that lost their jobs or have been temporarily furloughed and they might have taken their stimulus money and use that to pay April rent but they might be short on me rent because they have not yet gotten their unemployment so we at least I'm a significant amount of money with our agency solutions grant funded through the Housing and Urban Development but we're working with our partner community partner the coalition of homeless and on the screen is the that you could call seventy seven eight four two eight six zero five and they will screen you to see if you are qualified to get the assistance for rent and we could pay up to three months rent for you than that program we have also additional funding coming through Housing and Urban Development from the cares Act and the tribution and uses are still to be determined but we administer the Community Development Block Grant and that it is a program that works primarily again with low and moderate income persons in the areas of economic development safe and decent housing and suitable living environment and normally we get 2.9 million dollars in that block of money and now we're getting an additional 1.7 million to address issues with the community with coving response and we expect to include perhaps some funding economic development helping our small businesses most micro enterprises level an additional emergency solutions grant which is primarily for homeless initiatives almost prevention in which case we'll be using that eight hundred and thirty five thousand for areas of rental assistance prevention rapid rehousing as well you realize that not everybody qualifies for some of these more restrictive programs that come out of Housing and Urban Development so we'll be working with various offices in the county as well as our community partners to establish another program for bridge assistance and additional rental assistance and perhaps also some other much-needed assistance whether it's buying groceries paint your electric bill or utility bill your phone bill will be looking up some of those things and we hope to have a program that rolled out within the next ten days to two weeks Commissioner that would certainly be be something that could be helped to the hair salon person

that you spoke of this today that that's really who we're trying to reach and we'll get that information out because again we want to help citizens now and we realize that once the money starts coming in for unemployment that that will bridge of big gaps so we want to get in there now and and leave some of the issues and the stress that people are under now because haven't received those those bodies so stay tuned we'll get that information out that's wonderful thank you so much Marcy okay now we're going to turn to Keith Wylie from our who's our director of parks recreation and natural resources so Keith good afternoon commissioner thank you for giving me an opportunity and provide some insight to the community you know we're thinking on may be the phase openings in the future so some of you may know that this Wednesday April 22nd we we open some select sites to allow for essential recreation to occur basically underneath the governor's safer at home order those essential activities include walking biking hiking fishing and so on obviously all the CDC recommendations still should be informed and be in place on the next slot provided a list of those positions that we actually did open up with again limited use what you have here is predominantly the wilderness parks preserves and passive parks that again support the activities of that are considered essential for recreation purposes the facilities that are still open the boat ramps still remain open ito Point Park also for kayaking and canoeing is open and hot off the presses we will be opening Sunwest Park tomorrow actually have that's not in this PowerPoint but I did nation we're gonna be opening that facility the hours of operation would be from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 we are opening only two existing Annual Pass holders of Sunwest Park it's going to be a vehicular access only no walk-in access will be authorized during this first phase and again all the CDC guidelines need to be adhere to groups you know of more than ten will not be permitted there will not be any lifeguards on duty and this again this is really kind of the first step in evaluating the park system to see how we can open additional facilities following state and federal guidance as those are updated other piece of information that I would like to make clear is we're trying to figure out how we we're looking at the summer camp program you know we run 1115 programs throughout the county we've been waiting to get some updates on again from the CDC on how we can safely offer that program so the team is actively trying to figure out what summer camp could look like in a Cove in nineteen universe and plans as of yet but as soon as we get that that put together we'll present to Miss Pearson and mr. Boz for consideration I think another thing to bring up is is I'm sure we're gonna get questions on if we open some facilities what about athletic complexes you sports for those of you that have actually seen

the federal documentation youth sports or organized play if you will is really listed underneath the Phase two category of opening and I think again most of you may know that there's certain gates or conditions that you have to meet before you get to that point again I'll defer to to the Department of Health or the County Administrator and where we are in that process but I think we'll be looking at our reopening plan and how it matches up with those guidelines as of now but as of as it stands none of those facilities will be considered until we're at that point for opening if you want to email some questions in it's d McAuliffe at Pasco County FL net and next we have Major James mallow Pasco County Sheriff's Office and he's going to discuss the importance of the census which has really taken a backseat during this kovat time but it's very important afternoon James hey good afternoon thank you for inviting me to this town-hall meeting and thank you for having this town-hall meeting your Starkey we really appreciate you putting this on also just watchin that to your right Mike tremendous job with the Department of Health with with what's going on there we definitely appreciate you we also appreciate all the hard working people that are out in the county at the e/m we appreciate it England out there yeah unfortunately you know the census we has taken a little seat for having me on the count committee I really appreciate that and we're going to do the best we can and actually I do have some statistics for you that we're doing a good job I have to do a better job basically I want to I want to touch on four points and that is one what we're doing now with the Sun system what it does ever eat once every ten years is cheaper it's it's quick and easy it's never been quicker it's never been easier you can do it by phone you can do it by internet you can do it by paper that that should have been mailed to you by now you haven't over thirty first to get it back in so and what a lot of people want to get questions a lot of people say what are you gonna do with my information well a cop talked to me about it well I'm gonna get to that but US Census beeps you're a nation safe and confidential I want to tell you I wouldn't be sitting here today to you if I didn't on the census and so you know talk about I think one I think that's the last slide by the way I think that slide three that's up I want to change that sign not I can I can just roll three or four James they're saying that's the only slide we have but it does say slide three of four so I'm not sure what's going on there that's that's fine that's fine so I can go with it I'm so what what does the census do theirs it controls six hundred seventy five billion dollars of federal funds and of which Florida gets about forty four billion state I was actually a little bit over and what does it do it helps get things done in hospitals planning and construction you know we all

complain about our roads and things being built and so that has a direct impact so that's the reason why we need to make sure that our our numbers are good things like special education grants or children foster care and in what's near and dear to me obviously is gonna be first responders our firefighters our pops or EMTs out there it directly impacts our funding in or directly impacts you know the safety and security of our of our County and so that's why I am absolutely so passionate about keeping Pasco wonderful the community as it is and making sure that we get the funds that we should be getting and the thing is is we only get one shot every ten years so I really really want to stress that the importance of everybody just doing one simple thing and take it took me it took me about 30 minutes to complete mine so if you haven't completed yours please do again just to add a little bit to that title one grants it directly impacts title one grants or a local education agencies Community Development Block Grant C D CDBG grants for entitled entitlement programs through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and US labor workforce and Innovation and Opportunity Act it assists in that and so we we deserve our fair share of federal funding there is a tool online to look at how we're doing in the nation in the state and specifically in our county and it's pretty interesting last I looked at it we were about fifty three percent so 53 percent of us have turned turned the information in provided our in census information which is is a little low we definitely want to see that as close to 100 as possible so I think that's why they extended it to October 31st so if you're interested I suggest to go out on 2020 census com that'll be able to draw you in to see if you're interested in that stuff to see the different numbers we're looking at it do you have a phone number in case you have any questions I'll say it right now it's eight four four three three zero twenty twenty again you have any census questions questions on anything having to do with the census it's eight four four three three zero 2020 and willing to take any questions thanks James all right now we have now been joined by our County Administrator Dan miles um he's joining us from a remote location so good afternoon Dan welcome to the virtual Town Hall I think he's on okay unmute you there yeah I am sorry I started going before I did myself welcome floors yours Thank You commissioner I know Kathy and Marcy and Keith kind of covered various things that the county is doing operationally and different services we have available I will say that working with Mike neighbors came Department of Health we have in in other our other partners of school and the sheriff and others we are starting to build the opening Pasco up again plan and part of that is following the presidential guidance that was put out last week I think but also waiting on the guidance that is supposed to be

coming out of the state shortly probably Monday or Tuesday and from a high level perspective the a lot of data gates that are in the presidential plan we are pretty comfortable we're in good shape with obviously until we see the governor's plan and how they adjust those you know we won't know for sure you know but right now the county itself and by that I mean not just a kind of government but the county as a whole is in a good place to get ready to start cracking back opening and while it's gonna be a while before we get back to normal at least start opening various things up so I know you know Keith mentioned parks that we're open this week and one we're opening this weekend you know we're gonna see how the things go this weekend and maybe opening more or later next week and we're building a plan to open our libraries or a phased approach to reopen in the libraries over the next several weeks again depend on what the governor says and then our customer service counters are probably gonna stay the way they are for a while where it's whether you come in and drop something off and then we come pick it up or drive-through only like our utility service areas they're gonna stay like that for a while at least until we get into a phase two or phase three and and and operationally our all right we have a about a quarter of the county to a third of the county working from home right now and they will stay working from home until we get probably into a Phase two or phase three and some of them are working so well from home we never may never bring them back so you know that's that's good so we've had a lot of operations do that so I think our goal from my County is to you know take the governor's report that is going to come out next week from the task force you know lay that on top of the presidential stuff that we've been reviewing and built some plans and checklists for and then see where we are and see what that means from an operational standpoint I will say that if the governor's executive order is safer at home or stay at home order expires there is no countywide stay at home order so you know and I don't intend to necessarily put one in place what we will probably do is take whatever the state does and modify it for the county it does sound like it's gonna allow the counties flexibility based on their specific need which is great because we have 67 counties and 67 different needs we are not all the same so that's that's our plan going forward I will say we have a pretty head of pre tremendous revenue impact to us across several different funds and we are working through that now to actually got a later this afternoon we're going to go through some of our plans to kind of what how are we gonna make sure that we we still say solvent through the rest of fiscal year in light of the revenue impact so and that will impact things across the general fund which are libraries parks transport piece of our rescue several other general services we provide so we've not yet seen a downtick

and building permits but that's we also haven't seen the April data yet March was a strong month the building permits but we haven't seen April and I'm not sure how much a March was just on cruise control because it we just really didn't start impacting stuff until a lot of stuff and we don't have data yet on impact the sales tax and other things although we have some very obvious indications where those are going we actually haven't seen the revenue impacts yet so a lot going on we are anxious to get people back to work I know that you know with Mike they're mindful we aren't gonna be past this you know Cove in 19 anytime soon because there still is work to be done in treatment and work to be done in vaccines it probably won't be was off for quite a while so even if we do open up that doesn't mean that the risk is still not there we have to be mindful follow PPE all the CDC guidance and those things and we'll be doing that when we put that out too so it's kind of where we are is it County and where we're moving forward and what we hope the community is kind of ready to move forward with as well so that's there's something else you'll need specifically address commissioner that's gonna get them going through the highlights I think that's perfect we may get some questions in and we may have already if we do we're gonna email them to you so keep your email open unless they come up here to me and so I know that we've had some questions in I'm gonna I'm gonna go to the questions and order of your appearance on the agenda so I'm going to turn to Mike napier napier how I would say it wrong don't appear to start with his questions that he received already well we I have a couple questions in regards to the mortality rate and and the president and governor the president's alignment of well Pasco counties rate is much less on the mortality rate than the rest of the state and those are big broad numbers and when you start getting it down to a county level those numbers start getting a little broader and so when you look at it from a state standpoint those are per thousand per hundred thousand deaths when we only had fifteen cases in a particular day and they talk about 50 deaths per hundred thousand that number just doesn't jive real good for us so really what we're doing is we're taking the trends that we currently have looking at our peak and then making sure that we don't see another peak or spike that our numbers are coming down we're well below the the recommended cases per case all those numbers are there so now we're just want to make sure that we maintain those numbers and we don't see spikes even if it doesn't reach the threshold of what may be the the federal and national levels are going to be our numbers are going to stay below that and if we see a spike there might be some cause for concern when it comes back to the Commission on deciding openings Mike when you say the recommended number I think what you mean is is that we you don't see an issue out in the community where we're having inappropriate contact

and lots of community spread that's correct and and and those numbers don't tell that story it's a hard number and so we have to look at it broader than just a number of fatalities per hundred thousand and that's what we're looking at all right one of the interesting numbers that I think we have here in the county is the percentage of positives tested so can you share with everyone how good those numbers are sure and as I said in my presentation that I really believe we spent a year and a half working with our long-term care facilities in our hospitals and infection control to control the spread of hepatitis and so I believe I don't have more MORE adding the numbers together to be able to say I think the reason why Pasco County is at less than 5% infection rate for those that have been tested in other words if you had a hundred tests you would have five positive that's a five percent infection rate the state rate is 10 percent and Pasco County's is just a little below five percent so we're half the state rate so we're doing a lot of testing when we look at the number of people we've tested in Pasco County we mean collectively the health care systems we've done a good job in the number of tests we've put out there I know there's been concerns about where do I get tested and the reason why we said that that we needed to use screening criteria was because we didn't have enough tests and so we need to prioritize those people are symptomatic and that's why we imp who did the self isolation to make sure that you don't expose someone else when you're sick so we're doing a great job and I'm very proud of Pasco County and for the size of our County and the surrounding counties our numbers are very good and I and I try and tell that to people and reassure them and certainly today I looked at some stats and there everyday my newsletter we try and give out some new information and this morning I looked at the where we stood in regards to the number of people in nursing homes or seniors senior homes with infections of weird like 27th and MLS so that that's a really good number so great job over there at the Health Department Commissioner if I can to I want to give a shout out to the County em team and e fossa and Monica who have really done a yeoman's job of working with our health care community as well it takes a team and certainly do age but the county em has done an awesome job of really communications difficult getting out to the community and the team has done a really great job of getting that information out you know it's been such an unusual emergency because I've been on many hurricane emergency in situations but a health care pandemic situation this is the first and I'm sure it's the first for most everyone over there so we're doing a great job here and uh yeah I would say thanks to everybody in the county for sure okay so my next oh I had one more question that came in for you for contact tracing how does that

work are we gerd up for that because apparently that's one of the important things we need to do as we reopen sure and I talked a little bit about that my presentation in that there was some present a presentation done I think you f done one recently and Boston's looking at this about contact tracing in the state of Florida and specifically in Pasco County as I mentioned we have four staff that typically do that on the normal and you know we have a foodborne outbreak or we have hepatitis and people need to go out and if someone's positive we have to go out and investigate all their activities well we've moved from four people to 25 people that are able to do the follow-up contacts and that contact in some cases one person before we had isolation and this is a good demonstration of how this works when we have isolation in place and everybody staying home for the most part when I call you and you test positive I might only you may say I've only been in touch with four other people before we had the self isolation you've met it may have been to a neighborhood barbecue you may have been to your children's school event and I may have 40 to 50 people to call because you've been in touch with those people so the amount of work is reduced because of the isolation and the spread is reduced because of the isolation so that's the contact tracing is important in we we contact our positives within the first 24 hours to 48 hours of the lab coming back to us and many times we're counting them before the the doctors call them okay that's that is also very reassuring thank you Thank You Jerome question for you that came in our part time our people who worked part time eligible for unemployment be it depend on ease so what they do is they'll go back and look at the amount so obviously if someone's working minimum wage compared to someone who may be working making $25 an hour it's depending on how much how much earnings you had in the last four so the best thing to do is if someone has a question they can go ahead they could fill it out on there's actually that website that I mentality is able to pull it back up here for everyone but the koban 19.4 - Jobs org if they go to that site it has a lot of good resources and again that is the Cova 19.4 two jobs org and there's actually I believe there's a place in there where you can do an estimator to see what you would be eligible for based on answering some questions that has worked fairly well for people I believe in the past there's not been a problem the biggest problem has been the actual going out online the forum and trying to process okay great a question for Cathy Pearson Cathy on the elderly feeding program can it can any senior citizen get added to that list or what is what is the procedure to be able to get added on that that's listen so we need you to contact the other number of senior services which is seventy two seven eight three four three three four zero contact them and they will do an assessment and determine whether you're

eligible to receive so pretty much taking a lot of people so I don't think you have to be 60 and over though well I qualify another question Cathy the government gave us money to go to small to go to restaurants to help make food available for the food banks right and the other agencies helping feed people how do rest or a restaurant wants to be involved in that program how do they contact you so that is a brain thing we haven't even launched out yet so we just have a meeting with the food banks yesterday United WIC is taking the lead on that so we will make sure we get you the number to United Way we're fine I think that plan and hopefully we will have an agreement to county ministry by next week for him to sign on that so we have launched but any interested restaurants please Danny will make sure that we get united way's phone number to them and they can start process them wonderful all right I have a question for Keith Keith I know it's not your department but we got asked and actually I've been asked this many times will the state are you laughs are you allowed to go out to the sandbar and get off your boat can you go to and cookie and get off your boat people want to know we could reach out we can reach out to the state lands team and see if there's any any gonna be any change on that commissioner I would imagine that when the governor's office pushes out something from the task force that state parks would be included okay whatever comes out okay and as an Werner Boise it's closed for kayaking and hiking still yes it is okay James question for you on the census don't those numbers also affect our congressional representation in Washington yes so we can get as many as two two more reps so it there are so many things I could have droned on like I did at rotary the other day there it just impacts so many things if people would realize how many things it impacts and it will impact us for so long people would more and more people would just run run to fill out the census it's just that important thank you for asking the question yeah we can't stress that enough all right so I think I don't have any questions that came in for Dan did Danny do we have any other questions that I didn't get to okay so if you are if you if we received some questions that we haven't been able to answer we will get those emailed back to you again if you want to get information from the county we push out information all the time and you can get it on Twitter I have to pull this back up the Twitter is at Pasco County Pio on the the county has a Facebook so it's Pasco County Florida government and you can sign up for Pasco notify me and you will get social media pushes to you when when something's important and Mike do you do you guys have information yeah thanks commissioner our our website or our email address that you can ask questions to is Pasco dot web at FL health gov it's on the slide the presentation so when you push that out

it'll be there but we get a lot of questions and we work diligently to get back to you on those responses and so we would encourage people with questions to just send them to us excellent and I know that also the parks department has their own site Keith what is your Parks Department site or Twitter oh you can just go yeah well now you're Peters type in Pasco parks if you google that it should come straight up it should go directly to the to the website so as the county administrator stated they'll be working on their plans for what kind of rollout we're gonna have and if you are signed up for it and on any of these social media platforms you will get that information as soon as it gets out and this is not something that the county commissioners vote on this is an administrative decision correct Dan this is the way the local state of emergency set up it you know it becomes my decision what if with keep in Kathy Annie it's not made in a vacuum and obviously we don't make any decisions on that without taking into account the information we get from Mike and his team at the Department of Health right it's a group effort and AB Danna could you speak to the public meetings and and how we're holding those and what the upcoming schedule is so we are doing virtual meetings in the county right now we just did this week on the on Tuesday we have the board meeting virtually and on Thursday the Planning Commission bath virtually again in two weeks and let me bring my calendar up make sure I get the dates right so on the fifth of May will be the next board meeting that will be done virtually and so doesn't really have a location to it because a virtual meeting and then there'll be a Planning Commission meeting on the 7th after that and many of the normal advisory boards will start to begin meeting virtually in the month of May as well the meeting on the 19th were planning on being virtual the board meeting on the 19th but you know where that's after the date of the current executive order expire is allowing virtual meetings so you know we're planning on it being virtual but we'll be flexible to make sure we follow whatever the governor orders with respect to meetings so that's that's the near-term plan it's kind of hard to plan any further out than that right now with this thing so that this morning I did invite Tom Brady to come up and exercise and work out in one of our one of our nature preserves and to pick blueberries at Starkey blueberry farm so we'll see if he shows up here I'm very good I'm very glad to hear that it was one of the parts already already opened because I heard there was an issue at the city of Tampa so yes exactly I'm gonna go hang out in the parks and see if he comes up okay so with that I think we're done unless anyone has anything else that they wanted to say and didn't get a chance to get out to the to the public okay thank you okay so hearing nothing thank you all stay safe and if it warrants we'll do this again in another week or two but we wanted to make sure that everybody got the information they needed in such an unusual time we want

you all to be smart and be safe and and we want you to know your county government and your health department we're all here working hard to make sure you stay safe and to keep ours our economy as strong as possible during this time so thank you everybody [Music]

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