(Pixabay)

(Pixabay)

Sooke’s resilience provides ‘great deal of hope’

Mayor's message to Sooke residents

Maja Tait | Mayor of Sooke

In these uncertain times, I am grateful to live in a community like Sooke. Our compassionate spirit, dedicated volunteers, and collective resilience provide me with a great deal of hope – an immensely valuable commodity right now.

While Municipal Hall has been closed to the public, both staff and council remain available by phone and email for residents who require assistance with municipal business. Our wastewater facility continues to operate, our roads and public spaces are being maintained, and of course, our frontline first responders remain in service.

The District of Sooke is operating an Emergency Operations Centre to actively plan for and respond to the evolving public health situation. The EOC brings together community leaders and service providers to engage in scenario-planning and asset-sharing, allowing for a coordinated community response as we move through these extraordinary times.

The EOC is issuing regular, local updates, and posting them to https://sooke.ca/our-community/covid-19/.

On this site, you will also find helpful links to federal and provincial government information and directives to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in our community. As we are all being inundated with information, our site will focus on local response and Sooke-specific updates.

I will also be providing a weekly video update on Monday afternoons at 1 p.m. These updates can be watched live on the District of Sooke’s YouTube channel, and will remain available throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. A link to the video will also be posted on the COVID-19 section of our website.

As communities around the world have hunkered down, those of us who are able to have turned off the lights and gone home, as we have been directed to do. Please keep yourselves and your families’ safe, and reach out to one another to provide support and offer encouragement. For those of you providing essential services, we are exceedingly grateful.

Please continue to share your concerns. I can be reached at mtait@sooke.ca and I am in close contact with numerous agencies and government jurisdictions as we share best practices and work together to meet the evolving needs of residents.

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Maja Tait is the mayor of Sooke.

Sooke News Mirror