The adversity from 2019 and now 2020 only increases our love for the Miami Valley Region. We have had considerable personal, organizational, and regional adversity in 2019 and now we’re in this COVID-19 Pandemic. I am happy to say that MVRPC is still here despite the need for accommodations that achieve the health and well- being of our outstanding agency staff. Our agency has remained open and we are all working for the betterment of our Region.
As news and protective measures started ramping up from Governor DeWine and Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, MVRPC leadership started preparing for impacts from Coronavirus. I first voiced my concern over this topic to staff during our All Staff/Birthday luncheon on March 10th. By then, the virus was marching through Asia and central and western Europe. By March 12th we had an impromptu All Staff meeting and by the 13th we were loading up on Antibacterial soaps and sanitary wipes to make sure that our workplace remained safe and employees healthy.
After seeing the calamity of the travel ban on Americans coming back home from abroad and the upcoming college and school closures, it was clear that COVID-19 was here and social distancing would become the new normal. On Monday 3/16 we developed an employee leave policy that encouraged staff to use their earned sick leave or vacation if they were unable to work either in the office or from home. By the 18th, we added in another policy that would convert the agency to a virtual office where most of the staff would Work from Home on March 20th and 23rd. It seemed that we were just ahead of Governor DeWine’s and Director Amy Acton’s “Stay At Home” Order that would go into effect on March 24th and ultimately be extended through May 1, 2020. Thus, we extended our Work from Home trial period as well and I’m writing this article from home.
We are fortunate that we made intelligent investments in our computer systems over the last several years. Thanks to staff and consultant assistance, we have been strategic in making considerable investments in our agency network to address speed needs from remote computers over Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Several of us now have laptop PCs that we may transport between home and work or anywhere in between. If you will recall, during our last Executive Committee meeting, we added two laptop computers to our capital budget. We had also moved our finance, payroll, and human resource software to cloud-based systems. These tools or apps behave the same at home on pc or smart phone or in the office by personal computer. We have been augmenting our remote networks so that we may meet or telecommute either by phone or video by subscribing to the Zoom software application.
As all of you know very well, we too have another challenge with regard to conducting agency business. The various health directives on number of people have threatened the ability for MVRPC to conduct business among our large board of directors. We typically have 45 in attendance for our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and 60 for our Board of Directors meeting. We consulted with our attorney and other regional councils on how to handle conduct of business during this pandemic. After an opinion memo by Ohio Attorney General Yost and remarks by Governor DeWine, on Thursday, March 19th we conducted our TAC by telephone. We started working on this when there was not clear direction but as the virus became a pandemic and states of emergency were rampant, policy and judgement moved us toward our decision to conduct business by telephone. We held TAC and 25 concluded the meeting in about a half hour. The Open Meeting telephone service started to crash due to capacity issues. Following that experience, we moved to the Zoom platform for our first all staff meeting during our virtual office trial on March 20th.
This week we conducted the April Board of Directors Meeting using Zoom and it was very successful. We met the one-third quorum requirement had two action items in regards to grant requests that support the communities impacted by the Memorial Day Tornadoes approved by the Board. I want to thank our Board members for remaining actively engaged in the work of our Region during these unprecedented times.
Over the past two weeks, we have shared our experiences with other regional councils and local jurisdictions during conference calls on communication, finance, human resources, IT and other topics relevant to others through the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC) and Dayton Area Mayors and Managers.
