Petersburg’s borough assembly will try again this afternoon for a meeting on a local public health order that seeks to provide emergency sheltering options for homeless individuals and families along with first responders and health care workers.
Monday’s meeting on that topic ran into technical issues with the Zoom meeting. Phone callers including the mayor were not able to hear or speak without losing an audio connection. It was the first time for the assembly to try a meeting on the online platform. Distance meetings for the past month have been held by teleconference. They’ll return to that method of meeting today at 4 p.m.
Following another round of strong public opposition, the borough has revised what was called public health mandate number seven. It’s now called an emergency directive. Borough officials have sought to clarify the process that could be used to force someone to quarantine who is seen as a public health risk. Numerous community members submitted comments opposing any forced quarantine. I spoke this morning with the borough’s incident commander Karl Hagerman about the new proposed language and the intent of this directive
If approved the borough would reserve space in the hotels and would expect to be paid back for that cost by state or federal governments. Today’s meeting is at 4 p.m. and will be by teleconference. KFSK will broadcast it live.
