EDITOR'S NOTE: The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic March 11 - six months ago. To mark the milestone, we will be publishing a series of stories over the next few days about how COVID-19 has changed our world. Today, we talk to a Collingwood city staffer who has played a key role in navigating the town through the crisis.
Collingwood’s lead staffer took the helm as chief administrative officer of the town during the storm of the century.
Sonya Skinner started the pandemic in the role of executive director of corporate and customer service and succeeded former CAO Fareed Amin in the lead staff role. The succession was planned earlier this year. COVID was not.
“It has been an unusual time,” said Skinner. “In particular, a lot of the work of the municipality didn’t stop, although people perceived that it had stopped … taking on the CAO position it was like, ‘OK, what are we going to do in this unusual position?’”
September 11 marks the six-month anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic.
The international health crisis has reached and changed every department and plenty of policies for the Town of Collingwood.
“Right away, it made us challenge a lot of our presumptions … things we thought were rules,” said Skinner. “One assumption we had was that tourism was always good.”
The pros and cons of one of Collingwood’s largest industries became apparent when crowd control was a matter of public health.
Collingwood’s waterfront parks, in particular, saw very large crowds this summer. Bylaw officers were charged with extra enforcement of not only town bylaws, but provincial emergency orders.
The town started staffing parking lots at Sunset Point on weekends, starting a paid parking pilot project at the popular park last weekend. Town council also approved a temporary ban on barbecues and cooking devices at Sunset Point Park.
Skinner said another change from COVID has been the speed of decision making.
“The pace of those decisions changed and it became much quicker,” she said. “I hope that the spirit of innovation and the speed of decisions when we know it’s a good one will not be something that’s just lost because we’re into business as normal [after the pandemic].”
Though the ban is temporary and the parking fee program is a pilot, the issues are likely more permanent.
“I think that over the winter, the director of parks, recreation and culture with the other directors will be doing a bit of soul searching on the type of advice we’d like to provide to council for their decisions for next summer,” said Skinner. “I suspect, given how successful remote work has been, that we’ll continue to have a lot of visitors next summer.”
Remote work has proven successful for town staff too, according to Skinner.
She and her team of staff at the town are working on a more permanent work-from-home policy for the workforce. In early April, 65 per cent of the town’s workforce was working remotely.
“One of our assumptions was that you had to come into the office … to be able to do the work. The pandemic gave us a new viewpoint on that,” said Skinner. “We’re looking at how we provide all the services people in Collingwood need, but not necessarily providing them in person.”
The town already had a secure online server for documents in place before COVID, which, Skinner said, has allowed staff to keep working remotely.
Services such as water treatment, she said, will always be in-person work. For those staff who do return to an office, Skinner said the option of remote work is important.
“I think people will be much more cautious about coming to work if they feel sick,” she said. “It will be more acceptable to stay home or work from home … if you’re feeling sick.”
The town has used two video conferencing systems and has logged “thousands and thousands” of hours on each.
One of Skinner’s regular video conferences has been with the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit where the medical officer of health, Dr. Charles Gardner, has been delivering updates and guidance to each CAO from every municipality in the Simcoe-Muskoka region.
“It’s a chance for all the CAOs to ask questions and ask for guidance for things like reopening an arena,” said Skinner. “I feel they’ve been the most valuable meetings, especially as a new CAO, that I’ve attended. I can’t thank them enough.”
Gratitude has been another lesson for Skinner during the pandemic.
“COVID made us re-centre who’s really looking out for us and taking care of us,” she said.
In particular, she found the town’s facility staff were underappreciated, despite being frontline, essential staff and integral to the town’s efforts to prevent the spread of the virus within its own facilities.
Skinner noticed a policy drafted early on outlined a communications system to let town staff know when someone had been in the building with COVID, but the policy left out facility/cleaning staff.
“It was quite telling to me,” she admitted. “We realized we needed to value the frontline workers.”
Skinner joined the Town of Collingwood in 2019 and took over as acting CAO on April 27, 2020. Her succession of former CAO Fareed Amin was announced in February, and Amin’s departure was delayed after the pandemic hit. Skinner was formerly the CAO of Grey Sauble Conservation Authority.
