There is no playbook for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and local government officials throughout the country are trying to figure out how to best protect citizens while also moving forward with reopenings.
Carroll County officials are no different and they made two missteps this week. But, they reacted quickly, apparently recognizing mistakes, and implemented new procedures to ensure the same issues won’t reoccur.
Courts reopened to the public on Monday and, in an effort to adhere to social distancing guidelines to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, many who had to appear in court were told to wait outside the building. That probably seemed reasonable enough, in theory.
Problem was, it was a sunny, humid, mid-90s, mid-July afternoon. One person who had to be in court that day for a traffic matter, Sarah Wisner of Taneytown, told us she waited outside for more than an hour and began to feel ill, dealing, she said, with nausea and an increased heart rate.
Judge Fred S. Hecker, administrative judge of Carroll County Circuit Court, said procedures were changed the next day.
“We tried to strike a balance between maintaining social distancing, of course, and bringing everyone into the courthouse at one time,” Hecker told us Tuesday. “Yesterday was one of those cases where we had very large criminal dockets in the morning and the afternoon, so we had a lot of people coming to the courthouse at one time.”
Hecker apologized to anyone who was uncomfortable while they were waiting and said they have no plans to require anyone to wait outside the courthouse going forward. That’s good. No one should have to risk heat exhaustion because of a speeding ticket.
On Thursday, during the weekly Board of Commissioners meeting, President Stephen Wantz voiced his displeasure at the fact that a festival with more than 1,000 attendees had been held on county property — the Carroll County Farm Museum — the previous weekend.
“The Farm Museum is located at the base of Carroll Hospital Center. There’s COVID-positive patients in there looking down at 500 cars. Does that not trouble some of you?” Wantz said.
It should have. County government has been trying to educate citizens about procedures for dealing with the pandemic and allowing a get-together of some 1,200 wine-drinking, dancing festival-goers probably didn’t advance that messaging.
This one is totally on the county. We’re not going to blame any organization for trying to schedule an event that is legal under state law and the governor’s executive orders, as this one was. Further, the Secret Garden Music, Arts, and Wine Festival seems to have done everything right. Tanz Davidson, the event coordinator, told us they submitted a plan to the Carroll County Health Department in advance of the event, which they’ve held at the Farm Museum for a few years, and that they checked every person’s temperature at the gate, required masks in common areas, marked the ground to indicate social distancing, had plexiglass barriers, cleaned the bathrooms every 30 minutes, set up sanitizing stations and provided disposable cups for wine tasting, among other measures. He said guests were cooperative.
At the least, it was a bad look for the county to allow a huge event on its own land right now.
“I don’t care if the best practices were being used … my point is, we’re allowing a large gathering to come into our county when everything in the county, for the most part, has been canceled. It just doesn’t make any sense to me,” Wantz said.
The commissioners then voted unanimously to prohibit large events on county-owned property. That made the Maryland Wine Festival, held annually at the Farm Museum in September, the latest casualty of the coronavirus, canceled like all of the fire company carnivals, Westminster Fallfest and so many other traditional county events. On Friday, a county government news release detailed plans for the approval of events on county property going forward.
It was far from a perfect week for the county. But officials quickly recognized and rectified mistakes, which is probably all that can be hoped for during these unprecedented times.