New Westminster is in the throes of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s also looking ahead to the recovery phase.
In response to the pandemic, the city created a variety of task forces to consider the needs of specific areas, including at-risk and vulnerable populations, seniors and persons with disabilities, business and working economy, education and enforcement, and childcare.
“As much as we are hearing constantly about a ‘new normal’, that new normal, in my mind, is still a long ways away,” said Coun. Chinu Das. “We are still in the pandemic stage.”
Now is the time, Das said, to gather information that will help the city move forward when it reaches the recovery phase.
“There are lessons to be learned along the way,” she said. “I think it’s nice that we capture all these things that we are learning because then, in the next phase that we are going into, the recovery phase, there will be more lessons to be learned.”
Staff provides regular reports to council about the work of the various task forces, including an update on their activities and their accomplishments. Das suggested a section on “challenges” could be added to the reports.
“I am sure we are facing challenges along the way,” she said. “What has been difficult to get and how do you overcome it? It’s all with the view of gathering this information, so that when we get to the new normal ... we can really use it to apply to our city services.”
Mayor Jonathan Cote agreed it would be useful for council to know about the challenges faced by the working groups.
“This might be a case where we come out of this situation, but a second wave might come at a later point in time, and the hope is we learn from what we have gone through,” he said. “Then, if we have to go back through some of this stuff, we can do so thoughtfully and with a little more background than we did the first time around. I think that’s why this work is so important.”
As part of its response to COVID-19, the City of New Westminster launched a compliance hotline that people can call to report issues related to compliance with public health orders, including those related to social distancing.
“I notice that 514 contacts have been made,” said Coun. Mary Trentadue. “I am wondering if anyone can provide any kind of general theme of what those contacts have been, and then also, are we collecting or managing this data in any way so that we can use it going forward into the next few months to have a greater understanding of where are sort of the issues for the community, what is reoccurring, and how it might affect some of the work plan that we do?”
Jackie Teed, the city’s senior manager of development services, said a senior data analyst has started doing some work to help the city track the locations, types of responses and hot spots that the city may need to focus on.
“I think that that data will be really helpful and useful going forward, especially if this is prolonged or we see some sort of spike in the fall that we have to manage,” Trentadue said. “I appreciate knowing what the general themes are but also knowing that we are going to be using that data going forward.”
