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Glendale official: Final phase of reopening may be 'a long way off'

Posted 6/9/20

This week, Glendale entered Phase Two of three in reopening city facilities from shutdowns instituted to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Glendale Deputy City Manager Rick St. John told City …

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Glendale official: Final phase of reopening may be 'a long way off'

Posted

This week, Glendale entered Phase Two of three in reopening city facilities from shutdowns instituted to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Glendale Deputy City Manager Rick St. John told City Council this phase may last a while.

“I will tell you today, it feels like it’s a long way off,” Mr. St. John said, noting that Phase Three is triggered by “a very minimal number of new cases” of COVID-19 in Maricopa County daily. Mr. St. John said the city may not open its final stage of reopening until into or after the fall.

The county is currently trending in the opposite direction of that goal. Since Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay-at-home order was lifted May 15 there have been a jump in new cases. Daily new cases of the coronavirus in the county remained under 300 during the stay-at-home order to a peak of nearly 1,000 in early June.

“The number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in Maricopa County per day is steadily increasing. This is because there is increased spread in the community,” reads a document from the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.

Phase One of Glendale’s reopen was triggered by the governor lifting the stay-at-home order and involved the city bringing back many of its employees who had been telecommuting with social distancing and disinfecting efforts in place at City Hall and other workplaces. City parks reopened to the public during Phase One as well.

Phase Two included reopening City Hall, the Foothills Recreation & Aquatics Center and libraries to the public with limited capacity, social distancing and enhanced disinfecting in place. Libraries opened ahead of schedule before the other Phase Two reopenings.

“Our goal of course is to open in a safe and healthy way that keeps not only our employees safe but the community safe when they come and use these facilities and amenities, and there’s some challenge to that, both in our abilities internally to keep things clean with the staffing levels that we have and then with the community’s ability to maintain physical distancing,” Mr. St. John said. He noted one particular challenge was how the city could encourage social distancing for those wanting to play basketball or pickleball at the Foothills Recreation & Aquatics Center’s gymnasium.

While cases of the coronavirus trend in the wrong direction in the county, Glendale’s Phase Three — fully reopening city facilities — may still be many months off, but Mr. St. John says the city will still takes steps toward returning to normalcy while in Phase Two.

“While we’re in Phase Two, we’re going to continue to reopen and progress towards a complete reopening as best we can,” he said. “…It doesn’t mean the city isn’t going to completely reopen. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have fall programming. We are going to continue in Phase Two to look and see what’s going on in our community, what people’s expectations are and what our staff can do so that we can continue to reopen in Phase Two as much as we can.”

Mr. St. John said Glendale department heads are talking to department heads in other Valley cities, to make sure cities are moving ahead at the same pace.

“We don’t want to be too far ahead, and we don’t want to be too far behind because the community’s going to have expectations based on what neighboring and bordering cities are doing,” Mr. St. John said.