New Westminster City Hall has closed its doors to the public and is now offering essential services by appointment only.
Earlier today, the city announced it was closing city hall to the public and would provide essential city hall services, such as select permits and inspections focusing on life/safety requirements and the completion of priority construction projects. With the closure taking effect on March 20, anyone needing to book an appointment to deal with an essential services matter can call city hall at 604-521-3711.
“While city hall may be closed to the public, I want to reassure the community that all essential city services will be maintained,” said Mayor Jonathan Cote. “The measures being implemented are to ensure the health and safety of our employees and the public.”
According to the City of New Westminster, all city utilities, including water, sewer, waste collection and electrical operations, will be maintained with appropriate staffing and service levels.
“The city will also continue to provide core public services that are essential to the health, safety and stability of the community,” said a press release from the city. “Police, fire and emergency services will continue and will not be compromised.”
The closure of city hall to the public comes two days after the City of New Westminster closed local recreation and community facilities in an effort to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
On Wednesday night, staff and council made the decision to declare a local state of emergency on Thursday morning. At the same time, they made a decision to close city hall to the public.
“Staff members are going to continue to be paid in the City of New Westminster,” Cote said. “We will be reassigning staff that aren’t working on essential services to be on-call to work on other priorities that we are working on related to this crisis.”
While some municipal employees will still be working out of city hall, Cote said the city quickly moving to have staff work at home and at city hall on a rotating basis. He said staff will be deployed in a way that allows the city to best help the community.
“The city is focusing all of our efforts on maintaining essential for the community,” Cote told the Record. “We are also dedicating staff on three main areas. One: to protect vulnerable residents of the city. Number2: isolated seniors. And number 3: the local economic impacts there. All staff in the City of New Westminster are now focusing on either essential services or those three main areas.”
All totaled, the city has formed five working groups to help it respond to the COVID-19 crisis.
“Three of them relate to the three top priorities,” Cote said. “There is another working group related to human resources – this is dealing with all the human resources, the other one is regarding IT, which is coordinating our efforts to shift as much work as possible, so that employees can do their work from home.”
In addition to closing city hall to the public, the City of New Westminster is suspending Q to Q ferry services as of 10 p.m. on Friday, March 20.
While local community centres and recreation facilities have been closed since March 17, the city’s registered spring break camps and licensed child-care programs in city facilities continue to operate.
“We are looking to the province to give us direction with respect to child care and we are relying heavily on the advice from the medical health officer with respect to what we should be doing with child care,” Cote said.
The city is encouraging residents to utilize its e-government services at www.newwestcity.ca/onlineservices. More details about the city’s response to the COVID-19 virus can be found at www.newwestcity.ca/covid-19 and f via the city’s social media channels.
