Carson City issues Public Service Annoucement regarding COVID-19, flu season, construction, and more

The City is proactively taking steps to ensure the health and safety of its residents. In response to the Governor’s recent stay at home request, the City will continue to enable staff to work from home in order to limit the amount of personnel in the workplace.

All regularly scheduled City operations will continue, critical in-person services will be available and emergency services will not be impacted, however the City encourages residents to minimize in-person visits to City offices and to alternatively access City services online or telephonically.

The City offers a variety of services online and encourages residents and businesses to utilize the website, carson.org to access these services, including on-line platforms to help with your interactions with the City. You can also reach City departments telephonically. Should you choose to visit City offices in-person, masks are mandatory in all City buildings.

Board and Commission meetings remain closed to the public. However, public participation is always encouraged, the community can access public meetings at carson.org/meetings and provide public comment electronically by emailing us at publiccomment@carson.org at least one day prior to a meeting, or you can call in while a meeting is in session by dialing 408-418-9388.

With flu season now here, on top of COVID cases, hospital beds are becoming scarce. Carson Tahoe Medical Center is currently working on expansion of their capacity to continue servicing our residents, in daily communication with Carson City Health and Human Services. Please know that we at the City are doing everything possible to keep up and continue providing the best service possible to our residents.

One example is the COVID hotline, which last week was overwhelmed with callers, causing the system to disconnect callers or redirect them immediately into the voicemail system. We are working on creating capacity and a more efficient system to handle the increased call volume and have already seen improvement.

I ask everyone to be patient as things change quickly and we change to keep up. If you get disconnected or leave a voicemail, please call back, or contact your primary physician for instructions.

Carson City must remain steadfast in the fight against COVID-19. Thank you to Carson City’s businesses, residents, and visitors, for operating safely under the Governor’s directives. The City encourages the community to stay informed, practice good hygiene, wear masks, and when feasible please stay home. Our community’s commitment and resilience will reduce the spread of COVID-19 and keep our businesses open which is critical to our economy and to you, our citizens, so you can continue working and paying your rent or mortgage, buy groceries and pay for child care.

These are difficult times, but we will get through them if we work together towards the best possible outcome for the population at large. We are all suffering from compliance fatigue, but COVID-19 does not seem to be tired of us yet, so we must continue working together and doing what we all know must be done to keep our friends and family members safe.

In non-COVID news, the South Carson Street road project has been mostly completed. All that is left to do is some landscaping and streetlight installation. The majority of this project is underground with the installation of new water and sewer mains, storm drainage improvements, new electrical to go with the new streetlights, bike lanes and a new multi-use path. We also added pedestrian crossings with rapid flashing beacons, new landscaping and greenbelts and coming soon will be the public art installations.

Next week Mayor-elect Lori Bagwell will be providing Thanksgiving safety tips.

Stay safe and be smart Carson City!