Council grants emergency powers to Nygaard

The Lewiston City Council granted City Manager Alan Nygaard sweeping new emergency powers Monday to restrict certain activities in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Nygaard didn’t take any action after councilors voted unanimously to approve all three readings of an emergency powers ordinance, but the city manager said he would meet this morning with officials from emergency services, Nez Perce County and Idaho Public Health North Central District to craft some initial orders.

Councilor Bob Blakey said he would like Nygaard to follow the lead of others like Moscow and the state of Washington that have closed bars and restaurant dining rooms and banned gatherings larger than 10 people.

“Every day is another day that we’re wasting,” Blakey said of Lewiston businesses of that nature continuing to operate.

Councilors went back and forth for the bulk of the three-hour meeting to iron out the details of the emergency powers ordinance, with John Bradbury pushing the hardest to ensure that Nygaard would be able to ban any kind of congregation where the novel coronavirus could be spread.

“Time is not our friend in this process,” Bradbury said. “I would much rather have the mayor or the city manager have the power and not need to use it, rather than need it and not have it.”

Cari Miller, the only councilor who chose to attend the meeting via teleconference, worried about Lewiston businesses that are not taking measures to help curtail the spread of the pandemic. As a bank branch manager, she said she understood that some operations are essential, however.

“I would urge employers to look at how you facilitate this without shutting down your essential business,” Miller said. “If you’re not operating one of those essential businesses, then what are things you can do to protect your employees. I have heard of a lot of citizens in this community who are going to work because they don’t want to lose their jobs, and their employers aren’t putting anything in place to protect them.”

The emergency powers ordinance appointed Nygaard as the city’s civil defense director. He now has the power to issue four levels of orders, starting with a nonbinding advisory order to provid information and recommend guidelines for preventing, detecting and/or mitigating the onset or spread of a public health emergency.

The powers increase from there. The next level, a social distancing order, gives him the ability to impose restrictions on commercial, recreational or expressive gatherings or events, travel or visitation within the community, postponement or cancellation of public meetings and hearings, and limit the size of gatherings.

At the next level, an isolation order would allow Nygaard to order self-isolation of infected or exposed individuals, restrict geographic areas, limit city services and other conditions. Finally, a quarantine order would include all of those measures and add the ability to impose the conditions of a quarantine.

The orders will be reported to local authorities, the city council and the public before they are implemented, and a majority of the city council would be able to veto any of the city manager’s emergency orders. The ordinance also allows for a public appeals process, first to the city manager and then to the council if the city manager does not agree to alter the order.

At the end of the meeting, Councilor John Pernsteiner said that he has been working with city officials on a plan to help local businesses weather the economic catastrophe that is brewing over COVID-19. An early proposal is to use the city’s $300,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to set up a revolving loan account to quickly get money to local small businesses, rather than wait for Congress to hash out a stimulus package.

He cited studies showing that after a disaster, one out of every four businesses that close never reopen.

In other business, councilors met earlier on Monday with the three members of the Nez Perce County Commission to propose having the Lewiston Urban Renewal Agency help the county with infrastructure costs around its proposed new courthouse on Main Street.

County commissioners said they were not interested, however, preferring that the downtown urban renewal district close so the county would resume getting its share of property taxes that currently flow into the URA.

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.