Hard to believe we’re coming up on the end of August already, it’s certainly been an interesting summer. There hasn’t been very much new to report regarding the pandemic over the past month, though we’d still like to stress how important it is for continued vigilance by all our residents and visitors to maintain that proper social distancing, ensure appropriate sanitizing, and to wear a mask where required.
The number of new cases in the Commonwealth has made a favorable trend downward over the past two weeks, though the total daily numbers remain higher than back in June. But if this trend continues, the Town will likely move toward relaxing our operational restrictions following the Labor Day weekend.
Throughout the early summer, whenever public areas were allowed to reopen, that always came with conditions, most notably cleaning/disinfecting. The way the Town has been able to meet these requirements has been via a cleaning contractor, as we don’t have the ability to meet these requirements in-house. When the bid went out for cleaning services, we asked for quotes to clean many areas of town. We awarded the contract with the beach area as our top priority. The next priority were public restrooms around town.
But also solicited was a request for a quote to keep the playground in Central Park clean. Unfortunately, we ran out of available funding before we could award the playground part of that contract. As a result, we’ve had to leave the playground closed all summer. We’ve been asked, when is the playground going to reopen, and we don’t have a good answer for that. Until expectations for cleaning public spaces like that are relaxed, we really need to keep it closed. I know this is not what anyone wants to hear and we’re all getting very tired of these restrictions; but the public health concern is still there. And after all, we are talking about our kids!
Hang in there everyone; 2020 can’t last forever.
John Hozey – Town Manager
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