Clovis City Council Votes to end City’s Emergency Services Immediately

At the March 14th Clovis City Council meeting, the council voted to approve an official end to the city’s emergency services immediately. The emergency services began with an official proclamation request made on March 16th, 2020 from the city’s Director of Emergency Services of the “existence or threatened existence of a local emergency” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A number of other resolutions based on the Covid-19 pandemic were adopted from that time until the present day, but with Monday’s meeting, all orders were therefore rescinded. According to city attorney Scott Cross, the council had the option either to remove all resolutions that had been passed over the two year period, or to bring an end to the local emergency existence which would then by supplementation end all existing resolutions passed. The council, with the absence of Mayor Pro-Tem Lynne Ashbeck voted to approve the end to the local emergency 4-0.

The original staff recommendation, coming from City Manager John Holt, was to rescind the eight resolutions that had been left standing. However, he also stated during the questioning period that he did find that three of the eight resolutions had “language that could be interpreted as not being rescinded until the termination of the original emergency declaration from March of 2020.” Therefore, had the council not voted to rescind the original March 16th local emergency existence and ending all other eight standing resolutions, there was the possibility of the three resolutions that Holt had mentioned staying in place until March 16th of 2023.

The resolutions in question were passed from the original March 16th date in 2020 until April 19th of 2021. With the end of the local emergency, the council approves yet another step onto normalcy.

 

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JT is a recent college grad with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. He is mainly interested in sports and entertainment but covers a wide array of subjects. He currently writes for the Fresno State Baseball Dugout Club. JT looks forward to continuing his career at the Clovis Roundup and is excited to be working closely with a community that is very proud of its people.