City prepares for virus emergency
By Jerry W. Kram
The New Town City Council met Tuesday to discuss what steps city departments had taken to safeguard city workers from the COVID-19 epidemic and what steps the city still needs to take to be ready for the day more cases are discovered in New Town. The council also named Fire Chief John DeGroot to be the city’s emergency coordinator.
DeGroot accepted the post with the condition that it not take so much time that his duties as fire chief suffer. Mayor Dan Uran told DeGroot that the position would be more of an “eyes and ears on the street” role and letting tribal, county and state emergency committees know what the conditions are like in New Town and what the city’s needs are.
Uran, who is also a Mountrail County Commissioner, said the state and county have set up emergency bodies to respond to the epidemic, but he felt that southern Mountrail County was getting overlooked even though cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in New Town. He said that if the needs of New Town were going to be taken care of, it was up to the city to make sure those needs were made known to the county, state and federal government or taken care of locally
