City updates COVID-19 response at town hall

Aaron Boehmer, Managing Editor|March 17, 2020

Screenshot from Frisco Town Hall on Coronavirus Facebook livestream

Gathered for a virtual town hall on Monday March 16, Frisco city leaders addressed the local response to the COVID-19 outbreak. With four cases reported in Frisco it remains unclear how long schools will remain closed.

“We’re a little bit in uncharted waters,” Frisco mayor Jeff Cheney said on the Frisco Town Hall on Coronavirus Monday evening.

In light of declaring COVID-19 a public health emergency, Cheney and the city council hosted a virtual town hall broadcasted live on Facebook and through a phone forum to discuss the current situation in and around the city. 

Cheney was joined alongside City Manager George Purefoy, Frisco ISD superintendent Dr. Mike Waldrip, emergency medicine physician Dr. Mark Gamber, Fire Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Mark Piland, and Chief of Police David Shilson. 

Current closures

“We consider this crisis very serious in keeping our community safe,” Cheney said. “We’ve talked for years that public safety is our number one priority and will continue to be our number one priority.” 

With safety in mind and an emergency declared, Cheney relayed a list of city run buildings, events, and organizations that will be closed or suspended until March 27, including:  

Community health

Circling back to the virus as a source of those closures, Gamber explained the nature of COVID-19. 

“It is a virus that typically attacks the respiratory system,” Gamber said. “It circulates in the animal population, but there are now about seven types of coronavirus that circulate in the human population as well. It’s often called the ‘novel coronavirus’ because it’s new, we’ve never faced this particular type of coronavirus before. We don’t have immunity to it yet, which is one of the challenges we are facing from this spread, we don’t have a vaccine yet.” 

According to Gamber, the most common symptoms of COVID-19 are shortness of breath, fever, and dry cough, and when compared to influenza, COVID-19 is more contagious. 

“For each person that has influenza, you’ll typically give it to one or two other folks,” Gamber said. “COVID-19, it appears you’ll give it to two, two and a half other persons. So we’re finding so far that, based on early data, it’s slightly easier to pass along.” 

Social distancing is a method that when practiced can combat these symptoms and the spread of COVID-19. 

“What we found in China is that as it hit 60, 70, 80,000 cases, and they started to push social distancing, the amount of cases started to flatten out,” Gamber said. “I think it’s very appropriate that this city and our district has undertaken some social distancing policies that we’ve put forth.” 

Gamber suggests public outpatient options in regards to questions about testing and the virus in general, such as: 

Emergency operations 

Addressing Frisco’s emergency operations, Piland explains the multiple phases that go into such a process. 

“Our first phase is emergency management,” he said. “I think it’s important for our citizens to know that we have been tracking this virus since the beginning of the year. We’re probably nine or ten weeks into it. We started out with daily calls with the Department of Health with the state, weekly calls with the CDC, and those calls went on as we began to prepare.” 

Prior to forming responses, Piland and the emergency operations team planned and prepared for what could happen. 

“We looked at China, we looked at some of the other countries where this began, and we started modeling our responses after what we had seen in earlier months,” he said. “We run our emergency operations center, which is never closed and always open. We have capability to reach back with its staff, and someone that’s by the phone at all times. That’s where a lot of the planning and preparation goes in.” 

“These calls, as the virus can to a patient in Frisco and the first one in North Texas, ramped up to conference calls with the Governor, the White House, Health and Human Services Region 6,” Piland said. “We are really dialed in to all the national and state experts.” 

The second phase: operations. 

“We have some of the most talented and brave men and women in the Frisco Fire Department,” Piland said. “We deliver advanced life support, and they deal with infectious patients frequently. This isn’t the first time they’ve dealt with patients, we deal with flu, tuberculosis, some other infectious diseases. We’ve been pumping out directives to them in the past two months about preparing for these patients, and when it happened, they were prepared.” 

In an attempt to fight the virus, Piland and other city leaders put together Frisco’s coronavirus task group, beginning a few weeks ago. 

“We don’t stove-pipe these operations,” Piland said. “We include everybody. We had a call with all of our department heads. They know what’s going on in city operations, we’re in close with our police department. And I think that partnership, not just with the public, but with private agencies out there is what’s made us successful. We are ready for the challenges that are here today.”

While the city put together teams to combat this crisis, many members of the public across the nation have responded by purchasing large amounts of toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and food in fear that the supply chain will run out. 

Piland believes there is no need to fear. 

“The supply chain is there, we’ve had conversation with all the major grocers,” Piland said. “It’s stable, there’s been no interruption in it. I think it’s just a matter of calming some of the fears that people may have out there. There are no shortages and plenty for everyone as long as we’re disciplined about our purchases and don’t get afraid that items may not be there.” 

Police service 

“We’ve looked at our crime and call-for-service data for the last couple of weeks to see if there’s been an increase, and it’s actually trending downward,” Shilson said. “It’s important for the public to continue to be patient, we’re going to get through this. We are all members of the community, and we want to partner with the community to get through this together, because that’s how we’re going to do it.” 

Due to school closures and a switch to eLearning beginning March 17, School Resource Officers are able to join the city police force. 

“We have some additional resources with the schools being closed, we can reallocate our School Resource Officers,” Shilson said. “We have a nice supplement to our patrol officers that are out there. We’re out there to keep the community safe, we want to work with you. Frisco’s always demonstrated that we help each other out, and I think that’s what we’re known for. It’s important for us to stay patient and work with us to keep the community safe and get through this together.” 

Shilson has seen the community come together during this time, especially for those more vulnerable to the virus. 

“We’ve seen several groups pop up to assess meal delivery, doing shopping for seniors,” he said. “That’s really encouraging, that’s really what we like to see. The community is helping each other out and looking for ways to help each other.” 

Frisco Independent School District

After an emergency meeting Sunday, Waldrip and Frisco ISD made the decision to suspend in-class instruction and replaced it with eLearning.  

“Over spring break we went through several iterations of what we might do as a school district in response to this,” Waldrip said. “As of Wednesday, we were intending to open the schools today, have normal classes with some adjustments to some of our processes and procedures. As the week progressed this thing began to evolve and change almost daily. By the end of the week we got to a point where we were going to close the schools and implement an online learning platform.” 

While eLearning is currently set to run until March 20, this status is subject to change. 

“There is a good chance that this could extend into the weeks ahead,” Waldrip said. “We’ve got some school districts that are closing around us for longer periods of time. We will continue to evaluate that, working with our board and staff. If we feel the need to close schools longer, we will. The whole purpose of this is to help contain the spread of this virus.” 

Although the schools are closed, free and reduced lunch will continue to be provided to students who need it through the help of Lovepacs and FastPacs. 

“We have a population of disadvantaged students that qualify for free and reduced lunch and breakfast, and we’re continuing those services for those students,” Waldrip said. “Not only are we meeting the educational needs of the students, we’re trying to meet some of their very important physical and personal needs by continuing to feed those students that normally the families can’t provide food for them in the normal setting.” 

City Management 

For the city department, Purefoy notes that everything is running smoothly. 

“We always try to make sure the water and sewer stay active and flowing during this time just as any other time,” he said. “We’re vitalant about keeping those systems at bay.” 

While other areas of the city, such as Frisco ISD, see only key personnel going to work, the city departments remain fully staffed. 

“We’re still fully staffed and asking all our employees to take precautions,” Piland said. “If they come into contact with someone that may have the virus, they self-quarantine for two weeks. We’re trying to take all the precautions that we’re asking the general public to take to make sure that our employee base stays whole so that we can continue to provide the city  services.” 

For more information on the town hall and the city of Frisco’s resources: