Mayor Rob Marlowe
As I fully expected, Governor DeSantis has issued a statewide order for everyone to stay at home unless they are going out for essential services or activities. I fully support the governor’s decision to issue this executive order. It is going to hurt, but it has to be done.
You can find a copy of the order here: https://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/orders/2020/EO_20-91.pdf
Issuing a stay at home order for New Port Richey alone would not have made any sense. We are simply too small to make much difference by ourselves. We took initial steps like closing the library, rec center and playgrounds. Shutting most things down statewide should help slow the spread of the virus.
President Trump and his experts have stated that our country may have as many as 200,000 to 240,000 fatalities from the virus, even if we do everything right. Unstopped, the country could be looking at 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 deaths. These numbers should be sobering. This is not a “hoax” and is not “fake news.” It is our new reality.
We need to avoid doing “stupid stuff” that puts both ourselves and others at risk. A number of churches have reacted to the limits on gatherings by switching to online church services. My own church has now streamed the last two services from a nearly empty sanctuary. It is amazing what five people can accomplish working together: The Pastor, the choir director, the organist, and a couple of us techs to make things happen was all it took. Given my church’s number of older members, it simply didn’t make sense to put them at risk by holding a regular service in the building and asking them to risk their lives to attend. We’re helping them figure out how to watch the service live on facebook or the recording on Youtube. You might say that we’ve been forced to move our church into the 21st century!
Will everything come to a complete standstill for a month? No.
There are quite a few jobs included in the Department of Homeland Security’s definition of “essential services.” The list is included as an attachment to the governor’s order.
Even for essential services, people who can work from home are encouraged to do so. One of my projects for the past couple of weeks at my company has been to set up clients’ employees so that they can work from home securely over VPN (Virtual Private Network) connections. I’ll likely split my time between working by myself in my otherwise deserted office and working from home. Network operations is an essential service.
Take out and home delivery of food from local restaurants is still permitted. Bars are permitted to offer their products “to go” and both Cotee River Brewing and Ordinance One are offering a selection of beers to go. We took advantage of “Taco Tuesday” at Juan’s last night. We’ll continue to order take out from our local restaurants as we can. I strongly encourage you to continue to support our local bars and restaurants.
I encourage you to honor Governor DeSantis’ order and stay at home to the extent possible and practice safe distancing when you must go out. Lets all do our part to minimize the toll that COVID-19 takes on our residents.
Rob Marlowe, Mayor
Great words and advice for the current time and conditions. I hope all will follow the rules for the sake of us all.
The Medical experts cited 100,000 to 240,000 with mitigation. And stated repeatedly that they hoped that that bottom number would be less.
At this point, that hope is based on wishing for a miracle: That everyone will take this pandemic seriously and hunker down. I’ve seen far too many folks on facebook that appear to still be in denial. Ditto the pastor in Tampa that packed his sanctuary not once, but twice last Sunday in what can only be described as a horrible choice to test God in direct defiance of biblical instructions not to do so.
As a Christian I agree with you that the minister in Tampa is not only tempting God, I believe he is actually taunting God with this irresponsible behavior. God’s instructions about those in authority over us are very clear.
Thank you so much, Rob, for your encouraging messages and updates. Very much appreciated as are you. So glad you are NPR’s Mayor! 🙂
Thank you for your continued diligence to inform us on this growing pandemic. I will have to disagree on the one note that a stay at home order for “just New Port Richey” and “it being to small to have made a difference alone” is a wrong message. Literally anything helps and passing the buck is dangerous. Lord knows we’ve seen enough of that in this crisis. But hey, what does your Barber know of such things.
Thanks for commenting Peter. Let’s try this: “With only 16,000 souls and 3.5 square miles, a stay at home order would have had little effect without the surrounding hundreds of thousands of people ALSO being placed under a stay at home order, which I fully support.”
I was quite surprised that it took the governor so long to order a safer at home order. He was obviously looking for federal leadership and the messages coming out of Washington have been mixed at best.
The exemption for church services plays to the governor’s base, but is dangerous, if not deadly. My church cancelled the March 15th service completely and has been online only for the past three Sundays. If we can do it, there is absolutely no reason for more tech savvy congregations not to do the same.
New Port Richey went WAY out in front by ordering the cancellation of the Chasco Fiesta well before it became apparent to the general public that we were entering a crisis of Biblical proportions. We moved the following week to suspend ALL large events until further notice and we’ve continued to tighten things up weekly ever since.
One resident, seeing what happened after Mardi Gras in New Orleans, even wrote me to thank New Port Richey for having the foresight to cancel Chasco when we did. He was right. The current crisis in New Orleans could have been us.
These are dangerous times. I’m working from behind locked doors while at my company’s office and working from home the rest of the time. I get my temperature taken every time I walk into city hall for stuff I need to do as Mayor. For me, being a “cool guy” now works on multiple levels.
I hope we can get through all of this sooner rather than later. I’m already getting a bit on the “shaggy” side and I will definitely need to pay you a visit as soon as this is over.
Thanks again for your comments and please stay safe.
Rob