A proclamation recognizing the contributions of employees of the Department of Public Health and Environment and other city agencies to the COVID response.
Thank you, Councilmember Hines. See no one else in the queue. We're going to move on. There are no presentations this evening. There are no communications. There are two proclamations being read this evening. Councilmember Ortega, would you please read Proclamation 22 dash for 57, please? Thank you, Madam President, and happy to do so. Proclamation number 22 for 57 Recognizing contributions of employees of the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment and other city agencies to the COVID response. Whereas Denver's public health employees have been on the front line of the COVID 19 pandemic for more than two years. And. WHEREAS, many public health employees have been pulled from their regular jobs and thrust into work associated with the direction with the detection, surgery and prevention, mitigation and alleviation of COVID 19, all the while keeping their other work critical to the public good on track. And. Whereas, our public health employees and other city workers were called on to work many long hours in conducting this work, which has disrupted their personal as well as professional lives. And. Whereas, this work has frequently this work has frequently been put on them in positions, put them in positions that have exposed them or other frontline workers to COVID 19 and its associated symptoms. And. WHEREAS, Public health employees frequently have had to endure abuse by some members of our community while conducting their work with exemplary professionalism. And. WHEREAS, most public health workers. And other civil servants. Entered their fields because of a passion for helping people and therefore have experienced great mental stress because of this pandemic. And. Whereas, city workers from other departments, agencies and offices have joined their public health colleagues in providing services to the people of Denver in response to COVID 19. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver, that Denver City Council officially recognizes and praises the work of Denver public health workers and employees from other agencies that assisted them with their dedication and efforts during the COVID 19 pandemic. Section two that the Clerk of the city and county of Denver shall attest and fix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and that a copy be transmitted to Bob McDonald, executive director of the Department of Public Health and Environment. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. Your motion to adopt. I move for the adoption of proclamation number 22 for 57. Thank you. Has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. It's been too long years and our public health employees continue to be engaged in this process in one way or another. I can remember the early days council being on calls with the mayor and our public health director about whether or not we should be asking people in the public to wear face coverings. And then shortly after that, we had the public health orders that were rolled out. And, you know, we saw this wave happen around the world. And our public employees and our public health employees who led that effort were just so stellar in making sure that we had places for people in our communities to go get tested, to go in our communities and especially in our low income communities where they could get their vaccines. We still have a challenge in making sure that people in many of our low income communities still have not yet been vaccinated. And there are some ongoing efforts that many of us are a part of. But if it weren't for the role of our public health agency in taking that lead, I think we would have been a city, you know, struggling to catch up. And and I just wanted to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you from Denver City Council to our public health employees and all the other employees from city agencies that joined in. If we would have tried to list out the names, we'd probably be here all night because there were so many people that worked on this effort across our city and in many, many of our neighborhoods. And your work did not go unnoticed. It's very it was very much appreciated and still is. And I just want to say a big thank you. So thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega, for sponsoring this. And very well-received words, important, important to acknowledge them. Councilmember Kinney. Thank you. I also just want to echo the thank you to any of you involved in the health work. And, you know, we had a particular set of folks doing emergency operations center. They were not all health workers. They were department heads and appointees from a variety of walks of life. And they became emergency public health workers of sorts during that pandemic. So I think of you all in that EOC work, along with our Department of Public Health Workers. And I guess the one thing I just wanted to add is that, you know, many of us are here without masks today, but our cases are up. The pandemic is not over. And in fact, many of the state and federal resources for both testing and vaccination are winding down, which means those who are uninsured or don't have regular care are actually going to, again, need our public health workers more than they have, hopefully in the last month or two, since cases waned a little. So we know your journey is not over. And so this support in this thank you isn't just for what you've already done, but even for what we continue in the coming months. So thank you. Thank you. Council member can each and all round out the comments? A sincere, sincere thank you. I've been reflecting a bit more on the early days of the pandemic and the unknown, just the unknown risks, you know, folks being deployed to different locations and jobs that they maybe had never done before but went forward and did that work because it was on behalf of the city and county of Denver and her residents. And really the professionalism, standing up testing, especially in communities of color, vaccinations, testing. Again, when we got some of those surges and the continued work that we really need to do long term because we aren't out of the pandemic yet, we're seeing good signs, but we still got much work to do. And so thank Councilmember Ortega for sponsoring this proclamation. Madam Secretary, roll call. Ortega, I. Sandoval, I swear. I. Torres, I. Black All right. CdeBaca, I. Clark Eye for an eye. Herndon, I. Hi. Cashman Can I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, I close the voting and announce results. 13 Eyes. 13 Eyes. Proclamation 22 Dash. 457 has been adopted. Councilmember Ortega We have about 5 minutes for a proclamation acceptance. If you like to welcome whoever is going to accept that up to the podium. Thank you. Bob McDonald was planning to be here, but he had a family emergency. And in catching his hope, I'm saying that right. Williams is here. She is the deputy executive director for the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. And I know that a number of people in the audience, your colleagues are here and maybe at some point you'll be able to ask them to stand so we can fully acknowledge them as well. But the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much again. I am. And to give you Williams, I am one of our deputy executive directors at Denver Public Health and Environment, also known as. And I'm so pleased to be here on behalf of Executive Director Bob McDonald, who was looking forward to accepting the special proclamation on behalf of the entire team. Unfortunately, as Councilmember Ortega mentioned, Bob had to deal with an emergency at home. He would be standing here tonight. First, let me say a heartfelt thank you for this proclamation to Councilmember Ortega and to all of Denver city council members and to all of your teams. You've been right there with us as we navigated the challenges of the past two years. The team came together in a truly amazing way to protect our community during the COVID 19 pandemic. Our staff worked outside of their normal responsibilities, learn new skills, and put the health and wellness of Denver residents above all else. We didn't do it alone, though. We had the support of many city agencies, local partners and of course, city council and the mayor's office. We are grateful for that support and for your acknowledgment today. I want to ask Danica Lee, director of public health investigations for DDP, to come up and just say a few words in closing . Many of you know Danica from her work serving as Bob's deputy public health official during the pandemic. Danica. Thank you so much and thank you so much Council, for recognizing all the efforts of our city staff. The past two years have been the most trying years of my 20 years of service here with the city and county of Denver. We had to transform ourselves practically overnight from public health and environment to COVID response department. And the challenges that it brought were cannot be overstated. I'd like to ask all the members of our team who are here this evening to please stand up. These are just a small number of the people who were instrumental in orchestrating our response and the dedication that especially this group of exempt employees demonstrated. I have no words for the folks that you see here. Before you worked very, very long weeks, 60 hour weeks, 80 hour weeks to get the work done and did their utmost to sit down out that you did their utmost to really preserve some sense of work life balance for our our nonexempt staff. And so certainly all the other agencies in the city that contributed were amazing, the focus on culturally responsive resources in a way that we had never been able to and had the opportunity to deliver before for is something that I'm really proud of and I'm just so thankful that we have such a great department team and and city team. So thank you so much for recognizing us this evening. So that.