Lori Walsh: Now as South Dakota braces for the impact of coronavirus in the state. The state count from yesterday shows 320 confirmed positive cases with 98 people now recovered and those numbers will get updated within the hour most likely. Its individual cities and counties are making their own decisions about how to keep their economies running and their people safe and they do this under extraordinary circumstances and extraordinary pressure. Jack Powell is Mayor of Vermillion, South Dakota. He joins us now for an update from his town. Mayor Powell, welcome. Thanks for being here. How are you?
Mayor Powell: I'm doing fine this morning. Thank you. A beautiful day.
Lori Walsh: All right. Isn't it? Spring is here regardless of what else is happening in the world. All right. Tell me a little bit about efforts in Vermillion from an ordinance standpoint. Let's start there. What are some of the decisions that you have already made in your city going forward, dealing with preventing the spread of coronavirus in the city?
Mayor Powell: Well, the main thing is we're following the covid.sd.gov and also the directives that have been put out by our Governor Noem and I'd say we're doing a darn good job of it. We also are following the CDC guidelines. As you know, when we had the first reading of our ordinance, we had to wait five days before we could implement it. And I would say I'm quite pleased with the way individuals voluntarily embraced the ordinance even before it went into effect. We had a few, but that was not to be unexpected I guess. But we're doing quite a few efforts to mitigate the situation with our Chamber and Development Corporation with our, we subscribed to the 2-1-1 so that we have all kinds of opportunities in addition to the 9-1-1 materials. And our Vermilion food pantry, box distribution and community connection center and all of that are really doing a great job of getting food to people that are short on food right now.
And along with the Scouts helping to deliver and the public school systems. And another thing that's kind of unique with Vermillion with the University of South Dakota here, we're in close coordination with what the university is doing, going into distance learning and not having campus activities, not having the students back on campus. And I think this is a big, big help in that not congregating groups and that sort of thing. So I'd have to say overall, I'm very pleased with the way our citizens are reacting to all this.
Lori Walsh: Tell me a little bit about how that college job market is impacted as college students sort of vacate the town and go home. What are some of the other gaps that they leave behind? Or is that not a problem right now because so much of the job force is fueled by college student labor?
Mayor Powell: Well, I think it's the latter part. Of course the housing, there are still some people on campus that couldn't really get home, but in general the housing is shut down. Although they do have some food services for those people who are campus locked. But no, I feel really bad for the servers, etc, students that look to jobs in the restaurants and so on. It's really interesting to see the innovativeness of our restaurants in terms of preparing foods that you can pick up to go and that sort of thing. And it's been interesting and also satisfying to see how people are really supporting that kind of a program.
Lori Walsh: One of the things we've heard from mayors like Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken is that you make a decision in your city, but that doesn't necessarily apply to the cities and the County around you or in nearby communities. Have you heard feedback from people who say, we live in Vermillion and this restaurant's closed but I can drive out and in 10 minutes or 20 minutes be somewhere where the parking lot's full and people are congregating. And what has been the response of the business community for some of those sort of local challenges?
Mayor Powell: I haven't heard of any of that. It was a concern at the outset when we were first putting in our ordinance. It was a concern that it was being done piecemeal across the state and I was an advocate early of let's have a uniform program across the state so that we don't have that where people can go to one community and get service where they can't in their home community, etc. I have not heard of any issues here in our community area.
Lori Walsh: Give me a little bit of an idea about going forward in things like construction projects and building and trying to sustain the innovation that some people are doing to sort of keep businesses functioning but yet looking at this broader picture of how do we keep people safe but also keep Vermillion growing? Is that possible?
Mayor Powell: I agree with you. Yeah. Like one of the major projects that's going on right now is the renovation of the West side of the DakotaDome. And at the moment that's ongoing. That's not a problem. That's still going on. And there are a few other projects like that. Like we have breaking a pipe across the Vermillion river that services the South side of Vermillion. And that project is ongoing because we don't have the same kind of issues as we do with people congregating. So to my knowledge, things are going along well. Businesses are being innovative. They're selling gift cards and t-shirts and things like that. And putting balloons around town and painting windows and just trying to keep a real good upper lip going on during this time period. I don't know, from what I'm hearing recently, it sounds like we might be getting some businesses open sooner rather than later, and that's pretty optimistic.
Lori Walsh: It really is an hour by hour, a day by day conversation, isn't it? Yeah. Mayor Jack Powell we'll check in with you in the future about how things are going in Vermillion. We really appreciate your time today. Reach out anytime.
Mayor Powell: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you. Bye.