Page last updated on October 4, 2021 at 8:09 pm
Hi, this is John Hamilton, just reaching out to fellow city employees. This is Friday, October 1st, 2021. Thank you again, for all you're doing. A quick update on things happening in the city, first around COVID and the pandemic. This has been a rough week, a rough month. In September, we had 18 positive cases among our employees. That's the second-highest month ever since the start of the pandemic. It's the highest number this year, all calendar year, indicating that we still have a real problem with the pandemic and particularly the Delta variant. Many of you know, we had four cases in the Sanitation Department, positive symptomatic cases. We also had some folks who were exposed to close contacts who have to be isolated.
It prompted the first major service reduction we've had to implement since March 2020 when the pandemic began because of the impact on the Sanitation Department, when we had to stop the regular recycling pick up this week. We just didn't have the personnel to do it. So I want to thank all the sanitation workers for the extra effort they gave this week. I want to remind folks that it is the masking and the vaccinations that help protect against the disease and exposure. If you're vaccinated and you're exposed to someone, you don't necessarily have to isolate and take PTO time away from that, unless you're symptomatic and will deal with that. If you're unvaccinated and you are exposed to somebody, you have to take your own time off to protect and be isolated for the needed CDC guidelines.
So again, thank you to the sanitation workers who've done yeoman's work to get everything done. And this week, we're still checking on next week to see what the numbers will be like. But again, it's just a reminder that the disease is still here. About 30 Hoosiers are dying every day of this infection, and younger ones are dying than used to be affected. So please, please, again, consider getting vaccinated if you're not. Thank you if you are. This is still a very serious disease, hospitalizations, people on ventilators, again, losing friends and neighbors every day in the state. So thanks for all you're doing in that regard. Two big things have happened separate from the pandemic. I'll just quickly highlight. We passed annexation ordinances through the City Council last week.
Not everything, but virtually the vast majority of what we sought for annexation has been approved by the City Council. It now goes into some next stages with possible remonstrance. But we'll see how that turns out. I want to thank everybody who worked on that. That's a very important rightsizing of the city and very good for the city's future. And we had the budget introduced this week to the council with a vote coming in a couple of weeks. I'm confident we'll get a resolution of that in a positive vote. We still have a little work to do in discussions perhaps. But I know how much work that can be for some of you to help prepare that. Thank you for all the work on that. So over and out.
Thank you again for all you do. Be careful. Thanks again to all of you who work so hard to get us through this. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and thank you for taking care of the community the way you do.
