Boise led ‘in the absence of others:’ Mayor McLean talks about coping with pandemic

Boise Mayor Lauren McLean met Wednesday with members of the Boise Economic Recovery Task Force. The group of 13 business leaders, education officials and policy experts was asked last year to examine the economic challenges brought by the coronavirus pandemic and offer recommendations to aid in the city’s recovery.

Next week, the task force is scheduled to issue a report highlighting the steps taken to accomplish those recommendations. After Wednesday’s meeting, McLean talked with the Idaho Statesman. We asked the mayor how the city has fared during the pandemic, now in its 15th month.

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Q: What are your thoughts on the past year as Boise dealt with the coronavirus pandemic?

A: There’s a couple of things we’ve learned in this last year: Our community has been through a lot, and, as individuals. we’ve been through a lot. It called on us to be (flexible) in the way we lived, the way we worked, the way we governed. It called on all of us to live in different ways.

Both of you (reporter John Sowell and photographer Darin Oswald) are wearing masks right now, as we all have, and it made a difference. It was a game changer for the city that Boiseans were willing to do what we needed to do to protect public health. Businesses shuttered for a little while, and the governor shut down the state through the stay-home order.

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What did it stifle?

I look at it a different way and ask: What did the pandemic release and foster?

It fostered a willingness to try new things. It taught us how to be creative and to take risks and be courageous in policy making in efforts we took with small businesses, in efforts that nonprofits took to meet demands. It taught us how to pivot quickly and in the pivot, both juggle and meet emergency needs and crisis needs, but keep an eye on where we were headed and the steps we had to take to thrive in the long run. Most importantly, it brought this community together in ways we wouldn’t have had to do, otherwise.

There was simmering conversation from those hurting the most about the need to address housing and the lack of urgency on the part of institutions and policymakers. It brought to light the importance of housing, the importance of child care, the importance of transportation, all as infrastructure, to creating a solid, resilient, and ultimately successful community. And then, in this year where we’ve all struggled, we’ve learned that and we’ve all been given the chance to lean into it and improve the future through it.

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We all heard people that criticized some of the steps that were taken, the mask mandate, police tape on the tennis courts at Fairview Park and so forth. Do you think that was a minority of people?

Boiseans showed time and time again they expected us to lead in the absence of others, and that they were willing to pause, take steps that were different, that would prevent what we were seeing in other places.

Just now, in the Economic Recovery Task Force meeting, we had CEOs of companies and heads of universities saying what the city did was so incredibly necessary to protect the economy and to foster the growth that we’re seeing now. The assurances I got from the community that these were the right steps, the assurances that I got from the medical community that it was necessary, the assurances from businesses that this was indeed a pro-economic growth move to protect public health. That kept us going and gave us the confidence that we were doing what was needed to be done in the economic driver at the center of economic activity for the state.

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Are you concerned about the loosening of mask restrictions and whether that could lead to a ramp-up in new COVID-19 infections?

We continue to monitor and continue to have conversations with health professionals at the hospital systems as well as Central District Health, and I said when we loosened it, if you’re vaccinated, we’re not going to require you to wear a mask, we’re going to look to businesses to make decisions, and we’re going to support them in that decision-making and urge the community to do the same. Most establishments that I’ve gone to still require that patrons use masks.

As we move through this, sure there’s concern. There’s concern everywhere that’s been there all along, because we are focused first on the health of people. And so we’re monitoring, and, if we must, we’ll pivot again.

We haven’t seen spikes. We wanted to wait long enough to ensure that we watched how some of the variants played out, in consultation with health districts and medical professionals. And then we follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, so here we are.

But we’ll continue to monitor. And we have state-of-the-art wastewater monitoring. It gives the city and now the region an advanced preview of what’s to come, or what likely is to come with cases. In looking at that we can typically predict and what, if anything, needs to be done in advance of seeing it and test results.

In the report from our Economic Recovery Task Force, their No. 1 recommendation last June was to lead in the space of protecting public health, that we had to do that if we wanted to protect the economy in such a way that we could recover quickly. And so, we stood by that with their backing and knowing it would make a difference in our long-term economic scene here.

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For businesses that had to shut down at times and maybe cut their hours because they haven’t had enough workers, what are your thoughts on that?

There are structural issues about people returning to work because they don’t have child care, they have different things they’re juggling at home with work from home, and the lifting of masks was done based on looking at the data that we have here.

Businesses have continued to choose to require masks to protect their employees, monitoring the size of crowds in their facilities and doing everything they can to protect the public, but also protect their people so that they can remain open. Our work in the last year was definitely in partnership with the business community and the steps we took, the partnerships and programs we created, even events that could happen.

While we still have event capacity limits, we created an incredible program with the health district to review any event bigger than the cap, and if they gave it a stamp of approval, that event could go on. So we were able to have the Big Sky basketball tournament. Conventions started coming back to the facilities. The program that we’ve had with businesses allowed them to have more people in their facilities, in their establishments. And there are quite a few requests for permission to put patios in our parking spaces, so we’re continuing to look at that.

All of this has been done with an eye to protecting people, ensuring that the economy is as solid as it can, and our businesses are as solid as they can possibly be in this unprecedented 100-year event.

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Do you have any concerns about Boise State University announcing they’re going to allow a full stadium for football games this fall? Do you think we’re at a point where that’s safe to do?

Boise State has been a leader in safety precaution. I fully expect that they’ve worked with the health district and look to cases modeled on how they’ll manage things and have made a solid decision.