Keeping calm and vigilant, and maintaining our humanity by looking out for each other, will get us through this

By Staff

March 15th, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

City Hall announced Friday afternoon that all public indoor facilities were being closed.

The purpose of this closure is to slow the spread of the virus by reducing the amount of personal contact.

Burlington activated its Crisis Management Team (CMT) to coordinate City efforts to protect public and staff from the spread of COVID-19, while maintaining essential City services to the community.

To aid efforts in reducing the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the community, the City of Burlington has made the decision to close all City recreation facilities for a minimum of three weeks, as of this evening (Friday).

With the recreation facility closures, the following services will be suspended: March Break programming, arenas, pools and community centres, including the Seniors Centre.

All City organized large public meetings and gatherings are also cancelled, with the exception of Committee and Council meetings at City Hall.

The CMT will be reviewing internal City meeting guidelines and issuing an update on Monday, March 16. City Hall will remain open for business with enhanced health and safety protocols for staff.

Some members of Council had difficulty with the way city handled the release of the decision on Friday afternoon.

Some residents expressed concerns at the way the city handled the COVID19 problem.

One resident felt that

“essential services should be clearly identified in the disaster management plan which should be reviewed and updated annually.

“A chief spokesperson on these issues should be clearly identified. An upper echelon planning team comprising key municipal employees should be identified.

“A protocol should be in place to deal with the redeployment of human resources to critical and essential functions. Most importantly, there should be regular ongoing tests and exercises to practice and evaluate emergency responsiveness and to refine protocols where necessary.

“We’ve been through SARS. We’ve been through 9-11. We’ve been through the 2013 ice storm, and the 2014 flood. Protocols and measures on how to deal with emergencies and contingencies should have been in place long before now. The City shouldn’t be cobbling this together in the midst of a pandemic at the 11th hour.”

There does not appear to be a single spokesperson. News comes out of city hall with a comment from both the Mayor and the City Manager.

There is not yet a single place one call send an email to or call for information in Burlington. The Regional 311 service is limited in what it can provide.

The Regional Police are screening all telephone calls.

The Regional Medical Officer of Health has chosen to use “privacy” as a reason for not providing information or saying a matter is “under investigation.”

What the public does have going for it is common sense and listening to what the science has to tell us.