John Scharzkopf III, Prospect DTC Chair
A mere nine days after I was elected Chair of the Prospect Democratic Town Committee, Region 16 students were sent home to learn remotely, the Prospect Senior Center closed its doors, the Community Center went dark, and the governor told everyone who could stay home to please stay home. While the shutdown of our state is definitely not related to my new role, the timing has made for an interesting learning curve for me.
Instead of just worrying about scaring up a quorum for our meetings, our DTC was faced with a string of questions that needed to be answered quickly and correctly. Fortunately, I have a team of well-informed, experienced committee members and officers who can find information quickly and learn new ways of meeting and communicating. Phone conferences and Zoom meetings have become our new normal.
For a town like Prospect, which only recently installed voicemail in its Town Hall, the learning curve has been especially steep. To be clear: our local government is still functioning. Recycling pickup has continued on schedule, our town council is meeting virtually and continuing to work on the 2020-21 municipal budget, and, while town offices are closed to the public, town employees are working.
If you’re having a hard time finding information about these and other aspects of our town, though, you’re not alone. In the scramble to ensure residents’ safety and compliance with public health guidelines, communication has been an early casualty. Updates to the town’s website have been spotty, outgoing voicemail messages – if they exist -- aren’t providing much guidance, and communication from the Mayor’s Office has been sparse.
For many of us, these lapses in communication have a financial impact. Do you have the information you need to continue conducting your business operations? If not, can you find it quickly? Do you know what resources and services are available to you? How well has that been communicated?
While some town offices have struggled to adapt, others, like our library and our regional school district, have barely missed a beat. Our schools began providing “grab & go” breakfasts and lunches for students right away, and they continue to feed students every school day. Teachers have done a fantastic job implementing distance learning; the amount of work they’re doing to keep our kids learning is staggering and often thankless. We can’t forget, though, that they had some infrastructure, like the one-to-one Chromebook program for the middle and high schools, already in place. Those programs, implemented over the past several years, put our schools in a much better position to be able to get up and running quickly.
Now is a good time to pay attention to how your elected representatives and leaders – local and otherwise -- are handling this crisis. And November is a good time remember what went well, and the decisions that could have helped things go better.
Stay well –
John Schwarzkopf III
Chair, Prospect Democratic Town Committee
Instead of just worrying about scaring up a quorum for our meetings, our DTC was faced with a string of questions that needed to be answered quickly and correctly. Fortunately, I have a team of well-informed, experienced committee members and officers who can find information quickly and learn new ways of meeting and communicating. Phone conferences and Zoom meetings have become our new normal.
For a town like Prospect, which only recently installed voicemail in its Town Hall, the learning curve has been especially steep. To be clear: our local government is still functioning. Recycling pickup has continued on schedule, our town council is meeting virtually and continuing to work on the 2020-21 municipal budget, and, while town offices are closed to the public, town employees are working.
If you’re having a hard time finding information about these and other aspects of our town, though, you’re not alone. In the scramble to ensure residents’ safety and compliance with public health guidelines, communication has been an early casualty. Updates to the town’s website have been spotty, outgoing voicemail messages – if they exist -- aren’t providing much guidance, and communication from the Mayor’s Office has been sparse.
For many of us, these lapses in communication have a financial impact. Do you have the information you need to continue conducting your business operations? If not, can you find it quickly? Do you know what resources and services are available to you? How well has that been communicated?
While some town offices have struggled to adapt, others, like our library and our regional school district, have barely missed a beat. Our schools began providing “grab & go” breakfasts and lunches for students right away, and they continue to feed students every school day. Teachers have done a fantastic job implementing distance learning; the amount of work they’re doing to keep our kids learning is staggering and often thankless. We can’t forget, though, that they had some infrastructure, like the one-to-one Chromebook program for the middle and high schools, already in place. Those programs, implemented over the past several years, put our schools in a much better position to be able to get up and running quickly.
Now is a good time to pay attention to how your elected representatives and leaders – local and otherwise -- are handling this crisis. And November is a good time remember what went well, and the decisions that could have helped things go better.
Stay well –
John Schwarzkopf III
Chair, Prospect Democratic Town Committee