Navajo County Public Health Director Janelle Linn opened her presentation to the Board of Supervisors last week by stating, “I am excited to give this update today, because for the first time in a long time, it is good news. We had only 152 newly reported cases of COVID-19 reported to public health last week, a decrease of about 120 cases. To contrast, there were many days previous we had double that amount in a day. Of those 152 cases, 38 of them had at least one dose of vaccination.”
She added that there are concerns that the Public Health Department is watching, including hospitalizations and mortality rates. “They are staying about the same even though our case counts are decreasing. We still have the Delta variant circulating in our community and those who are catching that are still getting very sick. What we are seeing is that people who have had at least one dose of the vaccine are not seeing the same severity so we are still really pushing those as being effective in preventing severe disease. We are seeing a large spread of infection in our younger population, but it is our older population that is being severely affected.”
Linn closed by saying her department is surveying past cases to see if any who were sick are “long haulers,” people who have not fully recovered from COVID-19 weeks or even months after first experiencing symptoms, to determine what needs may need to be met.
Two Navajo County constables were recognized by the Board of Supervisors for outstanding service. Phyllis Romo received the President’s Award from the Arizona Constable’s Association and Greg Sharp was named Arizona’s Constable of the Year by the same association.
Also on the agenda was the recognition of several Navajo County employees.
First, the employees of the month of January were recognized by the CARE (Continually Achieving and Reaching Employees) committee. Pamela Harris, Russ McCray and Laurie Valde received awards.
Personnel Service Awards were given as congratulations to Angelica Estrada, Jared Robinson, Isaura Nez and Rebecca Robertson for five years with the county; and Kathleen Swietanski and Ricky Denton for 15 years with the county.
The CARE committee also made a presentation to M. Donette Goodman for her retirement after 23 years of service to the county in the probation department.
In other business, the board:
* Adopted resolutions canceling the May 17 election for the White Mountain Summer Home Domestic Water Improvement District, as well as the White Mountain Lakes Special Road District No. 2 and deeming the position vacant.
* Appointed John Everett Murray and Louise Annette Liggett, both of Snowflake, and Danielle Elaine Earl and Jason Joseph Giangiuli, both of Show Low as Republican Precinct Committeemen for their respective precincts.
* Approved back tax land parcels sold as auctioned online and approved the Clerk of the Board to sell the unsold properties over the counter.
* Authorized letters of sympathy to David Clark and Roxanne Pergeson.
* Approved contracts in the amount of $9,166 per month to Daniel Kraiser of the Kraiser Law Group and John C. Belt of the Belt Law Firm for indigent criminal defense services through June 20, 2023.
* Approved a one-year contract in the amount of $4,800 to Adam K. Zickerman with The Zickerman Law Office, PLLC to provide legal services for the Navajo County Attorney’s office.
* Approved a service agreement with Summit Healthcare for medical equipment calibration.
* Approve a customer agreement between Motorola Solutions, Inc. and the Navajo County Animal Care and Control Division in the amount of $9,883 for WatchGuard Video body-worn cameras to increase the animal control officers ability to provide factual objective information during future court cases and aid in officer safety.
The next meeting of the Navajo County Board of Supervisors will be held at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 8, in the board meeting chambers, located at 100 E. Code Talkers Dr.
