Morning Edition; Gary Shaw

It's morning edition on 89KRPS, I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro. For many of us staying at home has become the new norm during the coronavirus pandemic. With school shut down, business is shuttered, and gathering is limited to no more than 10 people. One week ago today, on Friday, March 3rd, Joplin Mayor Gary Shaw announced that the city would impose a stay at home order that would go into effect on Monday, March 6th, at 12.01 a.m. I spoke with Mayor Shaw on Thursday morning via Skype. And first asked about a star process in the days leading up to announcing the city's stay at home order. Kind of my model in my personal life is to prepare, to pray, and then be a piece. And you know, I think that having Joplin having gone through the tornado, we've learned that there's great dental benefit to be prepared. And then as a Christian, I'm a man that believes in prayer, and so I pray. And then I'm still working on the part of having peace because you turn things over to

those in authority and you turn things over to God, and you still want to try to do everything you can to try to help to make it better. I did receive a lot of telephone calls from people asking me to put a stay at home order in place. I received, you know, I didn't keep the poll, I didn't write them all down. When you're in the middle of the battle, you kind of handle the situation as they come. But I would say that the number of calls that I received from places asking me not to put it in place was probably equal to the number of those requests. And you know, as an elected official, my desire is to serve and represent the people that have put me in place for the last 18, 19 years. And so I would, I think that very seriously. The state of Missouri now has over 3,300 positive cases of COVID-19, and the virus has killed at least 58 people in the state.

Mayor Shaw has been in continuous meetings, monitoring their conditions, both in Missouri and across the Forstee region, and then include speaking with the mayors of other local cities. And I hadn't been meeting on a regular basis with our health director, and who had been meeting daily and sometimes more than once a day. And there was even some times that they spent all night long looking at what was going on and seeing what was happening in our community. And then they were feeding the information. And of course, I was getting information trying to keep the council up today. And I may be the mayor, but the mayor is a spokesperson for the council, so the council's involved as well, even though during this time, they're kind of operating, you know, distancing like everybody else. I just tried to compile all the information I could get. We did get a couple of briefings, telephone briefings from the governor as to what he was doing.

And I guess that, Fred, in the back of my mind, I voted, I took this very seriously. I was trying not to operate in fear, but to try to use wisdom and gain all the information I could receive, you know, before making an invite to the rest of the council as to what direction I need to go. I'd even visited quite regularly with the mayor of Web City and the mayor of the OSHO. We were talking together about what was best for our communities. And so we were trying to get all the information we could. This is the second time that Gary Schaum has served as mayor of Joplin. The first was from 2008 until 2010. And he has served in Joplin City government for 19 years. He says he understands the impact that it would have on local businesses if they were forced to shut down. And I guess the one of the things that was in the back of my mind too, I was trying to keep from creating another crisis while dealing with the current crisis. And of course, the other crisis is the financial crisis of people that I shut down would

close their business and that type of thing. And not that that financial is more important than health because it certainly isn't. But certainly I was trying to see if there's a way that we could handle the health without affecting the financial end of it as much as possible. So that was one of the reasons why we held off. And when we finally got made the decision to do it, we had met early that morning. And we didn't, the governor hadn't, we hadn't heard from the governor as to what his plans were or anything. I had visited, like I said, with a couple of the other mayors. And we were all feeling that it was probably time that we needed to do something. And they were both trying to decide what they were going to do. And so I met with staff and we decided that the conditions had gotten to the point where we'd best go ahead and put a stay-at-home longer in place, trying to be proactive, trying and feeling that if we took this particular action at this point, it would keep us,

get us ahead of things. And so far, we've been blessed I'd had because we haven't had any additional cases in Joplin, I think Jesper County had one additional case yesterday, but we haven't had, or maybe the day before, but we haven't had any additional cases in Joplin now for three or four days. Mayor of Joplin, Gary Shaw, speaking about the stay-at-home order that is an effect in the city until Sunday, March 19th at 11.59 p.m., unless the city modifies it. The Missouri Statewide stay-at-home order is an effect until Friday, April 24th. You can find the full interview with Gary at our news blog at krpsnews.com.