Villa directs changes as Menifee addresses health crisis

Armando Villa, Menifee's city manager, will lead the many changes coming at City Hall as officials face the COVID-19 pandemic. File photo

By Doug Spoon, Editor

It will take a few days for City of Menifee officials to identify and address all the ways Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “stay at home” order will affect Menifee residents and city government. Preparations made the previous two days appear to have put the City a bit ahead of the curve, however.

A few hours before Newsom’s announcement that all but “essential services” employees should stay at home, Menifee city manager Armando Villa released a statement describing plans for a virtual City Hall designed to minimize public interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. This statement was the result of two days of intense planning by administrators while City Hall was closed to the public.

The City’s initial report was that City Hall would be closed to the public for one day (Wednesday) to develop safety precautions. On Thursday, the closure was extended another day. Then late Thursday came the announcement that until further notice, City Hall would be closed to foot traffic and that plans are being developed to serve residents, developers and others electronically.

Villa’s statement also re-emphasized the importance of the City Council’s approval Wednesday night of a Proclamation of Emergency, allowing officials to more easily prioritize and organize responses to the pandemic, as well as track expenditures to address the issue.

“We’re going to have to adjust the way we do business, at least for the foreseeable future,” Villa said Thursday night in an interview with Menifee 24/7. “It’s not going to be business as usual. It will be an alternative in which we rely more on technology. Luckily, we’ve been able to get a good handle on that.”

Villa said the changes, which include digital processing of plans from developers, electronic processing of permit requests from developers and residents, and multiple phone lines dedicated to various departments, have been discussed previously. In fact, digital processing of developer plans as an alternative to the bulky blueprint rolls has been an option at City Hall for months. But now, under pressure both to minimize contact between employees and residents and among employees themselves, what used to be an option has become a necessity.

“There’s a whole bunch of things we’re trying to do to minimize interaction,” Villa said. “While in the past we were reluctant to do those things, we are now being forced to do them.

“I think the antidote for this thing is separation, distancing, and basically defensive tactics. We’ve eliminated all types of City programs. The only medicine you have for this right now is to eliminate contact with others. Eighty percent of what we’ve been telling people the last week is, stop getting together for things.”

Villa said it would take a few days for city employees to be fully trained and have the technology in place to handle the public’s issues over the phone and/or digitally. He said the “virtual City Hall” program would be rolled out in phases. At the same time, Villa and his staff have been working on the best ways to assist local businesses and minimize damage to the local economy.

One way the City plans to do this is to offer economic incentives to local businesses, up to a maximum cumulative amount of $250,000. Priority will be given to those that provide essential services to vulnerable populations.

While details of this program are being worked out, the City is already publishing a list of local restaurants continuing to offer to-go food, making every effort to support those struggling businesses. In addition, a list of all “essential” businesses to remain open likely will be published, including gas stations, grocery stores, medical facilities and more.

“The governor ordered a stay at home initiative. He knows we need essential services, essential staff working at restaurants and grocery stores, but at the same time, we’re trying to get people to stay at home," Villa said. "If you need to go out, go out and get food and then go home.

“Restaurant owners are impacted, but they’re starting to see that people can go pick up the food and go home and eat it. Yes, we’re going to see an economic impact. We just don’t want it to be bad. We’re trying to come up with ways to balance the safety aspects of it with the economic impact.”

Sales tax generated by restaurant visits and grocery sales contributed $9.9 million to the City's Measure DD fund in 2017-18 and $9.5 million in 2018-19, according to City documents. This fiscal year, the City budgeted for $10.6 million revenue from Measure DD, the 1 percent sales tax approved by voters in 2016 to boost revenue for public safety – primarily a new municipal Police Department.

Although a decrease in restaurant sales during the pandemic will eventually make an impact on Measure DD funds, Villa said the City will actually get a spike in DD funds first because of the large volume of grocery sales this month. Measure DD revenues are distributed to the City every three months, so it could be six months before the impact can truly be measured, Villa said.

Meanwhile, planning to accommodate the governor’s order for minimal personal contact calls for some City employees to work from home and others to be moved down the street to the Police Department headquarters, which won’t be occupied for another three months or so, when it is fully staffed for a July 1 launch.

Menifee is not the only city transitioning to a virtual City Hall during this time. The City of Temecula announced a similar plan on Thursday. But Menifee’s prior planning and its technological improvements made during its move to a new City Hall building has made it one of the first to make this change.

“We started exploring ways to adapt, and instead of drawing lines and using facemasks and spacing requirements, we started thinking about how we have a heck of an IT infrastructure,” Villa said. “We’re already doing plan checks over the Internet. Why don’t we just expand this idea of a virtual City Hall?. We’re already doing that with a lot of realtors. We tell them they can communicate with us by email, teleconferencing, send plans electronically.

“We’re working on an interactive web page that will allow exchanged digital information, plans, things like that. Even if developers would drop off plans for us now, the fire marshal and the county health department is asking us to put those plans in quarantine for three days. So we wouldn’t be able to open them up even if they dropped them off. Then we have to spray them so when people are opening up the plans to check them, they are not potentially breathing contaminated plans.”

Villa was asked how the changes will affect the average resident who has business to conduct with City Hall.

“We are developing the software infrastructure where they can do it online,” he said. “They can always email it to us. We’ll do our best to process it and send them a permit or whatever is needed. We’re experimenting with the idea of having people send in pictures of construction instead of conducting inspection. We’re also trying to set up several phone lines because we realize not everybody … primarily our seniors … are as tech savvy.”

Menifee residents can expect many more changes as Villa and other City officials face the challenges that lie ahead.