Troy mayor outlines approach to COVID-19 recovery, thanks essential workers

Troy Mayor Dallas Carr last week lauded convenience store clerks and supermarket and food service workers for carrying on during the COVID-19 pandemic in the same breath as medical professionals and first responders.

“If you go to the shop or if you get a burger or get anything in town, make sure you say thanks to these people,” Carr said during a Troy City Council Meeting on April 15.

He made his remarks during a portion of the meeting, which was held on the teleconferencing platform Zoom, set aside for discussion of the pandemic. It’s not the first time since the pandemic gripped the nation that Carr has gone out of his way to applaud retail and customer service workers.

In an interview earlier this month, Carr described those still working in customer facing jobs, providing food and supplies to residents, as heroes.

The praise comes as retailers, including supermarkets, grapple with securing their workers’ safety while handling increased demand. Earlier this month, reports of grocery store workers dying from COVID-19 began circulating.

An April 6 Washington Post article documented coronavirus-related deaths among retail workers in Illinois, New York and Maryland. Closer to home, Carr acknowledged the risk retail workers faced even in remote, northwest Montana, where most people know one another.

“I go to the parking lot and I don’t recognize half of these people. I don’t know where they’re coming from,” Carr said. “Yet the clerks [and others are] staying open and helping us to live our lives as well as possible.”

Carr also outlined steps officials in the city of slightly more than 900 have taken to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Public workers have mostly been ordered to self-quarantine, and the city is using vacation and sick time to cover the missed work while others are performing job duties from home, he said.

Telling employees to stay off the jobsite was a reflection of the city’s small workforce. Troy cannot afford to lose one or two people to COVID-19, Carr told the city council.

Handling the threat posed by the pandemic has required nuance. One of the city’s employees is new to the job and lacks vacation time, but is about to become a new father. Carr said officials are trying to figure out a way to put him to work.

Another chose between working and self-quarantining at home with his wife, newly returned from a several week stay in Arizona.

“She has to self-quarantine and if he chooses to be around his wife, which I don’t blame him … he has to get a motel room and bring her food or whatever, but he’s not going to be able to stay there and come to work. We’re not going to take a chance,” Carr said. “He’s elected to self-quarantine at home with her.”

Still, Carr met with department heads earlier in the week to discuss what work can be performed as the pandemic wanes. Plans to work on the new portion of the community cemetery likely will move forward as Carr believes the job can be done without infringing on social distancing guidelines.

The hard part, he said, will be preventing residents from wanting to speak with public workers as they perform their jobs.

“We’re going to tell them politely we’re trying to do this and they can always call us,” Carr said. “All of us working together is what’s going to make this work. This state is going to hopefully come out of this a little sooner than some of them. Hopefully.”

Carr said he has spoken with the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners in planning for a way out of the COVID-19 shutdown. Local officials will wait to see what action Gov. Steve Bullock takes on April 24, when current restrictions on travel and social gatherings are set to expire, and respond accordingly.

“We have got to get going,” Carr told city councilors. “We’ll wait until the 24th and wait and see what Gov. Bullock has to say and then we’ll get together and decide what is going to work for us.”