Mayor On Coronavirus in Huntsville - Pt. 1

Dan Shaffer has an extended conversation with Huntsville's mayor, Tommy Battle.

Topics include impact on his job and what needs to happen for Huntsville to re-open more businesses.

In huntsville, steven dill stevendilsizian, waay 31 news.

>> dan shaffer: at 6:00 we're taking you deeper into the impact of the coronavirus through conversations with local leaders and experts.

Tonight we're joined by huntsville mayor tommy battle.

Thanks for joining us again tonight on the show.

>> mayor battle: glad to.

>> dan shaffer: it's been six weeks now.

Live looks different from all of us.

What has changed for you?

How has coronavirus i'm patted you and your family?

>> mayor battle: it's a different world out there.

Our world changed real quick about eight weeks ago.

And now we're sitting at home, waiting to have meetings.

We meet a lot more by zoom now.

We have conference ca calls.

Ms. battle and i have caught up on talking to each other and also having time to watch tv together.

>> dan shaffer: those are just -- what other adjustments have you had to make and how stressful is life now, the job specifically?

>> mayor battle: it's one of those things you're constantly thinking about.

Everybody is right now.

You're thinking about what moves you need to make to stay ahead of the curve and make sure we as a community do the right kind of thing and think ahead.

It's a 24/7, but that's what you signed up for.

That's what you should be doing right now.

>> dan shaffer: good point.

The current safer at home order extends until may 15th mp what is your opinion on the safer at home order?

>> mayor battle: well, we made up our own kind of reopen plan and sent it down to the governor's office.

The only thing it had in there that this one does not have is a little bit more requirements to let restaurants and some of the personal services businesses open.

And make sure we had a lot of protections in there for people so you're protecting both the workers in the restaurant and the general public.

That's the key difference in that, is the personal services and the restaurants.

>> dan shaffer: so your timeline would have included opening restaurants and personal services a little bit sooner than later?

>> mayor battle: it probably would have been the end of this week starting to open those.

But very limited.

Start opening 25% of occupancy.

Waiters, servers and kitchen crew and everybody else had to wear gloves and masks.

And even going as far as asking the people coming in.

Just to start us off on a road.

That would have been phase one.

Phase one and phase two and phase three, each get a little bit more lien yefnt as we go along.

>> dan shaffer: explain the hierarchy.

Are you waiting for the governor, do you follow her lead or do the cities have the latitude to make these decisions on their own?

>> mayor battle: as i told everybody.

The governor trumps mayor.

And you know, this kind -- in this kind of case i do think it is important that we have a statewide policy.

That if -- we're not an island among ourselves.

We connect to marshall count, we connect to franklin county and morgan county.

And, you know, we need to be connected to the whole state.

The state needs to move together.

And we're going to follow the governor's guidelines.

>> dan shaffer: what kind of things do you think you need to see before huntsville starts to reopen even more businesses?

>> mayor battle: you know, i think we've got -- we've had a good start right here.

But our wait and see is a 7 to 10 day period.

Once we start opening retail like we did last friday and go through a weekend and everything, we need 7 to 10 days to see what the results of that is.

And how much it affects us with how many people -- additional people get covid-19.

We know that we're going have few more people get it just because we have more people getting together.

But it's kind of wait and see.

This weekend, we were monitoring the parks, we were monitoring downtown, we were monitoring bridge street.

All the places that people gather, we were monitoring those to see how people did.

And quite frankly, it wasn't perfect but i thought it was pretty good.

People were trying to keep social distances and everybody.

They weren't wearing masks but when you're outside you may not need to.

Was when you go to the publix and lowe's and we tail shops, you can't control people within six feet of you, you need to wear masks in those cases.

>> dan shaffer: it's good to hear.

From your observations people are doing a pretty good job at social distancing even with this relaxed order.

>> mayor battle: you know, we had a policeman on bicycles down in the downtown area.

They gave us a report at the end of it.

We rode around and tried to get some observations there and observations from others who were out there, the parks and rec guys as they were opening up parks and rec on a very limited basis.

People were doing -- people were doing what we were asking them to do, most of them.

There are always a couple of cases.

>> dan shaffer: always a few exceptions.

That's for sure.

Talk to me about the city's relationship with the medical system.

Are you consulting with huntsville hospital, crestwood about making other decisions down the road?

>> mayor battle: we're very fortunate here.

We have a meeting every morning at 11:00.

We have a phone conference that we all get on.

Alabama department of public health has at least one of their representatives on there, maybe two.

Huntsville hospital usually the ceo from hospital huntsville, david spillers is on there, ceo of crestwood hospital, pam hudson is on there.

As we make decisions about this the local governments come together with the emergency responders, with the medical team, to make sure that we're making the right decisions for the area.

They give us boots on the ground, what they're seeing in the hospitals.

Because that's really the most important thing out of this.

Covid has so many people who get covid-19 but how many go to hospital, how many are on ventilators?

>> dan shaffer: uh-huh.

Interesting, i'm going to go back quickly to the social distancing thing.

Monday madison county chairman dale strong and the ceo of crestwood medical center, dr. pam hudson, they both gave the people of madison county a barely passing grade of "c" chen it when it came to social distancing.

How would you grade the people of huntsville?

>> mayor battle: i expected to be in the b range, maybe b minus even.

But the whole thing is, people have been -- for six weeks, they've been in their house and they finally have a pretty weekend.

They start to get out.

They're going to go out and do something.

As long as they're out in the parks and they're walking the trails and they're doing things that don't have a connection, a direct connection to someone else, that's a great thing.

If you went by some of the home improvement stores, some of the bigger big box, you would see people out front lined up but trying to keach separated by six feet from each other.

And you know, as long as we're trying to do this and trying to do it right, i'm in the b range right now.

>> dan shaffer: what would you like to see improved?

Anything specific that you think would help make improvements?

>> mayor battle: you know, i think in some of the bic r big boxes, more masks would help.

You know, i did not see that many people on saturday wearing masks as they went into lowe's or home depot or walmart or some of those.

They weren't wearing the masks to the degree i thought they should be.

But monday there was quite a few people having masks.

So just depends on when and where you are and we get a snapshot of this thing.

But the snapshots are what help us make some of the decisions.

>> dan shaffer: local leaders, are they obligated to set an example do you think during a time like this?

Do you wear a mask when you're out?

>> mayor battle: when i go down the elevator i wear a mask because i can't control that.

People might be within six feet, if i go to a publix or i go to one of the big box stores, i wear a mask at that time.

When i'm in my car i take it off.

It's hot.

I take off my mask while i'm in my car.

But i'm the only one in there so i'm protected.

>> dan shaffer: all right.

Thanks, mayor.

Stay with us.

We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back we're