Changes came fast and sometimes unexpectedly last week with all levels of governments reacting to the fast spreading COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The number of confirmed cases grew throughout the country including the first five cases in Berrien County.
In Buchanan, City Manager William Marx and his
staff have been reacting day to day to the changing situation. At the start of this week, Marx had made the decision to close City Hall to the general public. People are asked to use the drop box outside of the building for making payments and also communicate their concerns by phone or email.
“We’re trying to reduce the chance of exposure to both the public and our employees,” Marx said. “The pace of how everything is changing is amazing. Businesses including restaurants are closing and I don’t think I’ve seen a parking space open at Lowery’s in the last week.”
“This is unprecedented and something we’ve never seen,” he added. “We’ve seen the stock market go down, businesses shutting down. Some restaurants don’t think they can make it with only doing take out.”
The city has continued to adapt as situations change. Marx noted that city workers came in over the March 14-15 weekend to cut a hole in the wall to install a glass window just inside the city hall entrance to keep visitors separated from staff.
“We did that immediately to keep some normalcy and allow people to be able to come into city hall,” he noted. “98 percent of the comments were positive.”
Unfortunately, that measure became moot toward the end of last week with the decision to close city hall to the public. Marx said he made the decision after both concerns from employees as well as the growing number of cases in the state.
At that point last week, there was suspicion that news of Berrien County cases were on the horizon. Christian singer Sandi Patty had performed at Andrews University in early March and reported last week that she had tested positive for the virus.
“The state went from 65 cases to 336 cases overnight,” Marx said late last week. “South Bend is restricting travel. We now suspect we are days away from local cases appearing, especially after the Andrews concert exposure.”
“Our staff also became increasingly concerned about exposure,” he added. “We had four employees appear with non virus symptoms but clearly they were feeling ill. This created a higher concern about exposure.”
Dealing with changing situations is something Marx has been doing throughout his career.
As most people know, Marx spent the majority of his long public service career in law enforcement. He worked for the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department for 27 and a half years, retiring in 2005. He then became the Buchanan Police Chief later that year and has also been the city manager since 2010.
Although he hadn’t really anticipated becoming the city manager, it’s actually a job he was familiar with. He grew up seeing his father work as the city manager of New Buffalo for 10 years. Even so, he said it was a tough first few months as city manager in Buchanan as he learned about the rest of the city’s operations.
“What a learning curve that was the first six months as I had to learn about streets, contacts and the department of public works,” he said. “But the skills and experiences I gained from the law enforcement world have been very, very valuable in this job.”
“You learn to listen to people even when they’re emotional, pick out the information you need and then go find a solution,” he added. “I could tell you hundreds and hundreds of small stories. It’s being that person and having the ability to be able to answer people’s concerns.”
In the current COVID-19 situation, Marx has been flexible in changing to meet the fluidity of what’s going on. As of the first of this week, he said all city services were continuing as usual although public access to City Hall as well as the Police Department was being curtailed.
The city has done everything from changing water and wastewater employees’ schedules (to limit personal contact and keep social distancing in place) to having police dispatchers ask more in-depth questions to evaluate medical situations to protect first responders.
He urges city residents to follow Berrien County Health Department and Centers for Disease Control guidelines as everyone tries to get through this crisis as quickly and painlessly as possible. The city is doing its part by keeping people informed through its Facebook page and other avenues of communication, he said.
Buchanan wasn’t the only area government making changes. Most local municipalities were closing their offices or severely limiting access. Berrien County also ended last week announcing that county facilities would be closed to the public starting Monday.
Area courts had already made decisions earlier last week to limit public access and to change operations in light of Michigan Supreme Court directives limiting the number of people to 10 in offices and courtrooms. All civil jury trials were adjourned until May as were most criminal jury trials. Other proceedings were being done via phone, video and mail.
Last week’s changes at the governmental level followed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s decision the previous week to close all schools, colleges and universities until early April. Buchanan Superintendent Tim Donahue reported that while instruction has switched to virtual learning, the district continues to provide breakfast and lunch meals to children.
People can visit the district’s website, www.buchananschools.com, to see the latest information. The district is currently providing to-go meals weekdays at the high school tennis court parking lot as well as at seven bus stops in the district.
For information about what’s going on in Berrien County related to the COVID-19 coronavirus, people’s best source of information is http://berriencounty.org/1643/Coronavirus-Disease-COVID-19.
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