Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's community conversation with Sierra Club Main and our special guest speaker, Aislin Sarnacki. My name is Marina Bach. I'm the communications and outreach manager here at Sierra Club Main, and I thank all of you for joining us today. I know it's a beautiful day outside, so thanks for taking the time to be here. Before we begin, I'll just go over a couple of Zoom logistics. I'm sure you're all pros now, but we do ask that you keep your microphone on mute just to help with background noise, and you can feel free to turn on or off your video at your choosing throughout the presentation. It is being recorded, so if you don't want to be seen, you can go ahead and turn that off. And then lastly, we ask that you put any questions in the chat, and we'll be going through and monitoring the chat, and we'll have some time at the end for some Q&A. And I'd like to just take a minute to acknowledge the land that we live on here in Maine. So Sierra Club acknowledges Indigenous land and sovereignty. We are in the homeland of the Wabanaki, the people of the dawn. We extend our respect and gratitude to the many Indigenous people and their ancestors, whose rich histories and vibrant communities include the Abanaki, Malassee, Micmac, Pasamaquati, and Panopska nations, and all of the native communities who have lived here for thousands of generations in what is now known today as Maine, New England, and the Canadian Maritimes. So this acknowledgement does not rectify the ongoing violence of settler colonialism, but is rather meant to cultivate an unsettling awareness of its persistence towards building reconciliation. And we are very honored to collaborate with the Wabanaki as they share their stories. And we thank the Abbey Museum for their leadership in decolonization efforts here in Maine and their work to create effective land acknowledgments. And with that, I would like to introduce you all to Beverly Roxby, who will be helping to facilitate today's webinar. Bev has been on Sierra Club Maine's executive committee for the past four years. She lives in Belfast and is a member of the City's Climate Crisis Committee. Bev has been in charge of organizing the chapter's involvement in the Common Ground Fair for the past four years, and we will actually be at the fair this September in the Environmental Concerns Tent, and we invite all of you to come see us. So with that, Bev, I will pass it on to you. Thanks, Marina. I have just a little bit of background on our history here, but I'll be brief because there's a lot that we have to hear from Aislin. So when John Muir was in his 40s, he summited Mount Rainier wearing street shoes. He crawled along crevasses with no ropes. They didn't bring any ropes, and he pounded handmade sharp metal spikes onto his shoes only at the last minute. But afterwards, he had this to say about his experience, doubly happy is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below. Continuing our tradition of getting outdoors, the Sierra Club Maine is offering its first outing since COVID began. It'll be on Memorial Day at the Brzemskot River Preserve in Portland. And you can go to our website for more on this and other upcoming events, outings, and general information, what we're involved with all over the place, our various teams that are working on things, including the community conversations that we've archived on this site. And this one will be archived as well to share with your friends if they couldn't make it today. Our speaker is Aslan Sarnaki. She will share with us her vast adventures in our state about places that we may never heard of, but are close by and how to hike safely, not like John Muir, and be prepared with the proper equipment. She's been a reporter in the outdoor section of the Bangor Daily News for six years, sharing her one minute hikes as a web link on the BDN online, often accompanied by her husband and by her beloved dog, Oreo. And I'm sure we'll hear a lot about Oreo and happily, I guess, Aslan has a new dog, which is great. Aslan was born in Winterport. She graduated from New Maine where her thesis was on the health benefits of hiking, something I'm sure we could all agree with. She's received several awards, including the Maine Press Association and the Bob Drake Young Writers Award. She has written three books on hiking. She's written Family Friendly Hikes in Maine. She's written Maine Hikes Off the Beaton Path and my personal favorite, Dog Friendly Hikes in Maine. Here to tell you more about hikes and walks available to all of us is Aslan Sarnaki. Thank you so much. I decided I was outside. I decided I would move inside because it was getting windier and windier and hopefully my connection is better in here as well. But if you ever can't hear me or anything, let me know. I'm so pleased to be joining you guys today and excited to talk about hiking. It's been a little while and yeah, first, I guess I'll just explain what it is that I do. So for the past 11 years I've written at the Bangor Daily News full-time and for most of that time I've had a hiking column and that hiking column brought me to new places every single week. I tried to do a different trail in Maine so I've gotten out quite a bit. But the crazy thing is people always asked if I was going to run out of places to hike eventually and the answer is no. I didn't get to even close to running out really. I kind of saturated my area. I'm from the Bangor area but a little bit outside of it in Dedham which is on the way to Ellsworth and so I've certainly hiked every trail within like an hour of myself but I've tried to really get out in the state and writing the books for Downey's books, the three books that I wrote, they wanted me to cover the entire state so I made special trips up north and to the west and east and south. I'm really trying to cover as much of the state as possible for those books so that was good too. And recently, kind of new news is I stopped working full-time at the Bangor Daily News. I'm still a weekly columnist for them which is great so I'll get to continue to write about my adventures but I am currently working on becoming a registered main guide so I can bring people out physically. I've been doing it for years via video and photos and writing and I plan to continue doing that but I'm really excited to bring people out physically and see their reaction to these beautiful places and be with them and my goal is to be an interpretive guide and really focus on the nature aspect of hiking and talk about the ecosystems along the way and slow down and appreciate trails whether they're really easy or Katahdin, something like that. Yeah, so I have a little slideshow prepared and I want to leave plenty of time for questions but I thought that I would do a slideshow so that you guys can write down some things that you're interested in from the slideshow and then also share some photos. So I will start sharing my screen now. Let's see. Let me practice this. So all right, can you guys see my screen? Give me a thumbs up. Cool. All right, so I wanted to focus this talk on hidden hiking gems in Maine which really is whatever I think it is but hopefully some lesser known trails, some that maybe you haven't heard of in Driven Right Past that I've really enjoyed and a lot of these trails come from the book Main Hikes Off the Beaten Path. However, if you have that book, No Fear, I will talk about other trails and you'll get something else out of this talk and these are just my book covers here. They came out one year after another boom boom boom and each of them have 35 hikes in them that are different than the other ones and the dog friendly one. One thing that I added to that particular book is I include like places you can eat with your dog outdoors always I guess is the rule but where you can eat outdoors with your dog and then lodging options as well which that was that was an interesting thing to add into the book because I was doing I was writing the book in the winter time and I kept calling up restaurants asking if I could eat outside with my dog and they were very confused but all right so I'll jump right into it. The first trail on my list that I wanted to share because I have such fond memories of it in the spring time and this is the time to go to this trail if you want to is the Annie Surges Sanctuary in Vassalboro. It's a great place to look for wildflowers. When I was there I photographed so many different types of wildflowers. No one else was there and it's kind of this obscure property because it's owned by the New England Wildflower Society and that's one of the cool things in Maine and one of the reasons I could my job I think and what I was doing became popular is because sometimes it's hard to find trails like this because there are so many different types of landowners in Maine that are generous and offer trails to the public and so to find these trails you have to go to all these different websites and all these different books and it takes some legwork and so this particular trail I was actually in the area because my husband's from that area and I drove by the sign and that's how I even came across it so no one else was there and the trail network is actually really well maintained and leads to some pretty neat stuff. Dogs aren't permitted on this one though so this is like one of those places where you can just kind of relax and enjoy wildlife without your dog which I love my dog but sometimes I like these places and here's are just some of the photos that I took there. I wasn't one of the things that I like to do and I think sometimes people can get a little bit intimidated by being a naturalist or getting into identifying things but I really have fun with it because I just take photos and then come back to my house and try to figure it out so I learned that like the upper left hand that's blood root and then you get to learn all these really cool things about blood root and what it's used for. There's also a really neat stone fireplace on the property some neat historical things. The other one that I really enjoy is a canal path in Searsmont and this is a part I kind of chose this to represent a much longer trail which is called the Georgia's River Highland path and it's a growing network it used to be 40 miles now and I think at the time that I did the canal path it was 50 miles and now it's 60 plus miles in the mid-coast region and it is maintained by the Georgia River land trust and it crosses all sorts of property owned by different landowners and this particular path crosses through property owned by Robin's Lumber Company and it visits this old historic canal from the late 1700s and not only that like you have a self-guided tour brochure that you can take with you and learn about sustainable forestry practices and there are some interpretive signs along the way so you know what you're looking at because sometimes it's very easy to walk by the the remnants of these old things and this trail the reason I like it so much in addition to it just it being neat that the Lumber Company would allow you to explore their property is that it travels by the beautiful Georgia's River which is lovely year-round I've done this in the winter and in the summertime and the the actual forest itself is just really beautiful I think because it is managed there's a lot more room for understory plants and so there's a ton of bunchberry and really cool things like that so it's just a really pretty pretty place to walk and again it's super quiet like I haven't the two times that I went there no one else was there and those things change over time as word gets out but yeah I should remember it being very peaceful and dogs are permitted on leash I always try to include that now in the beginning of my hiking column I didn't have a dog and so I would never mention whether or not they were permitted because I didn't even think of it but then I got my dog Oreo pretty early on in the column and he always went with me if dogs are permitted and so this kind of shows this map here on the left shows the trail and it goes all the way through they've expanded it over the years and it's also connected to like the Appleton Preserve and it's connected to the ridge to River Trail which is another one I've done so there's all these little sections of this path that you can kind of break up and do I don't know many people who just like walk it all the way through though I think that was the idea and I think that you know they're trying to bring economy to these different towns so if you do want to walk along sections of it go right ahead and stay at an Airbnb or a bed and breakfast in the area all right John B. Mountain in Brooksville another kind of lesser known place that I haven't seen other people out when I'm there and it's a kind of a representation of a land trust that I really love the Blue Hill Heritage Trust they have so many different properties and so if you check out their website they like very detailed descriptions of each of their properties and John B. Mountain is just one of them and this is just a really easy hike it's a great hike to bring kids on that are like young kids to introduce them to mountain hiking because the top has this bald it's weird it's like this bald mountain on the top but it's not a very big mountain it's just 250 feet and the trail can get steep and rocky in some areas so it'll give people an idea of what it is like to hike a mountain but in a very short period of time it's just a one mile hike and when I've hiked it in the winter and I've hiked it in the summer both is beautiful there are wild blueberries all over the place up there in the summertime in the winter the evergreen forest near the top is absolutely beautiful it can be you know I remember doing it when it was very snowy and dogs are permitted on most I think I don't know if yeah I guess there's a couple of Blue Hill Heritage Trust trails where dogs are not permitted but most of them they are and this is just some photos of in the winter time when I was up there with Oreo and I this is a photo here of Peter's Brook Trail and it's just another Blue Hill Heritage Trust trail that I love and it has a little waterfall that is absolutely beautiful and now it's connected to the Penny's Nature Preserve which is super dog friendly you can have your dog off leash and it was named after a dog and the trail network was created by a guy who just absolutely loved his I think it was a golden retriever and he donated the land after they built the trails so that's Penny's Nature Preserve which is connected to Peter's Brook Trail and I wanted to talk about the Donald Pond Public Reserve land unit it's right in my area my neck of the woods and I absolutely love it and I think more and more people are hearing about it but it's still it's like in the Acadia region and it's not as busy by far as Acadia one of the parking lots can get very full in the summertime but still it's one of those places that you don't see as much exploration so Black Mountain rises about over a little over a thousand feet above sea level and it but it's one of several mountains that you can hike in Donald Pond Public Reserve lands the hike is about three miles long you can go up two different directions you can go up the big chief trail from one side which is very mossy and rocky and cool or you can go up the Black Cliff's Loop Trail and actually create like form a little loop and that's a good hike as well but that's from the busier side by Scootick Mountain and Scootick Beach and you can see all this on a map online if you go to the Donald Pond Public Reserve land unit it's a state-owned property and there's a really detailed map online where you can see all these hiking trails but in addition to Black Mountain which I think is um lesser known than Scootick Mountain which is right beside it for some weird reason they both have beautiful views from the top um there's Caribou Mountain which is beside that and there's Catherine Mountain um which was reportedly named after the the ghost named Catherine that is haunts the road there the Blackwoods Road um so spooky um then there's Tunk Tucker and Little Tucker that is that's not quite it's in kind of a different area but nearby and all of those are great little hikes um dogs are permitted um it's pretty lenient on state-owned land that's a public land unit so you can have them off leash here and there you I think the beach you need to have them on leash so there's a there's a popular beach nearby as well and I've done a lot of paddling in that region um there's um for some reason geological reason I don't know the the lakes are really really crystal clear and they have tons of sand so there's a lot of sandy beaches in that area and here's there's some of the photos that I've taken um or my husband's taken of me um doing some of these hikes so we have Black Mountain and some of the views up in the top left that's the Scudic Beach which is a bizarre sandy beach um and which is right when you do the Black Mountain hike you can come down and go to the beach it's a part of the loop and um let's see next I wanted to talk about some of the Far East trails that I love because I always hear people talk about Cutler Cove um Cutler the bold coast and on that whole area and it's so Cutler Cove um or the preserve um is kind of getting a little bit overrun and so I've been visiting a couple other preserves in the area um and one of my favorites is Bog Brook Cove Preserve which is in it's in two different sections it's in Treescut and Cutler and or Trescut one of you guys can correct me um and it's a giant preserve it's uh almost you know it's getting up towards 2,000 acres and has five miles of trails and cobblestone beaches and freshwater pond and um one of the cool things about that preserve is it has this beautiful wheelchair accessible trail that leads to the coast and an overlook at the coast um dogs are permitted and I remember when I went with my dog Oreo um it was kind of I think it was during the week and um we drove to drive to the Trescut part of it you go through this beautiful blueberry barren and I remember just being like wow we're really out here like you're all by ourselves out here and we were the only people at the preserve um and spent the whole day there and it was about this time of year because I know there were blossoms and stuff all over the trees and um it was just gorgeous so that's a picture of when we went out and visited um and so that's um the if you look at the map you're looking at the northern part of the map there um the near the chimney trail and the ridge trail we went this photo is taken up on the ridge trails there's a little ridge on the property where you get a nice view and then this is the beach down below sorry I didn't let you guys see that for very long so some beautiful bold um cliffs and cobblestone beaches in that area and that's that's pretty much the case for a lot of eastern Maine if you get way out there you're going to see a lot of cobblestone beaches um which if you've never seen it's kind of remarkable all of the rocks are just completely smooth like some beaches the rocks are big like dinosaur eggs and and just perfectly rounded and then some they're they're much smaller um and again it's a geological stuff that works there that I don't know about but it's really neat um and you know sometimes a little difficult for dogs to walk on though so keep that in mind um and I did want to talk about this funny uh little mountain called Little Kinnio Mountain near Moosehead Lake so if you enjoy the the Greenville area um there are plenty of lesser known trails out there just stuff that doesn't get as much fanfare for for whatever reason and so Little Kinnio Mountain is actually taller than Kinnio Mountain which is the popular mountain in that area so Kinnio Mountain um absolutely beautiful but you have to go out on a boat to get to it because it's out on this peninsula that's not accessible by a road really so you need to take um there's a ferry that goes out to it or if you had your own boat you could go out to it or in the winter you can walk out to it if the ice is thick enough which we just did this past winter so that's Kinnio um and it's very popular it's part of a state park and it has a observation tower at the top where you get a 360 view of Moosehead um a great spot but right nearby right looking at it right from the shore is Little Kinnio Mountain and that is a great little hike it's steep it's about two miles round trip um and it's accessible from a road so you don't need to do the whole boat thing um you do have to navigate some logging roads with the Delorm Atlas I suggest um but it's a it's a great little hike and it's open views at the top and I would say um you know in addition some other lesser known hikes in the area I consider lesser known is number four mountain recently got a new trail and Eagle Rock recently got a new trail and they're part of the what's known as the Moosehead pinnacle pursuit which is a hiking challenge you can check it out online um and so they're becoming more popular and there are better sign or signage to get to the trail heads I remember when I initially did Eagle Rock the trail included like a rope to get over up the steep area and the trail had consisted of a sign that was made on the back of some road sign and it was like the lettering was like written on the sign and it was tacked to a tree and it was really hard to find um so now it's all much better there's official signage and parking areas and all that stuff um for those trails and then Little and Big Spencer have always held a special place in my heart they're beautiful mountains in that region and again they just take some driving on logging roads so um I think that's why fewer people may go to those mountains so these aren't some views and this isn't the best of best days when I hiked it it was very foggy but still you can get an idea for the types of views that you'll see from Little Kineo um and I'm sure you'd be able to see much further in more mountains on a clear day and then this um is Kineo you guys have never seen it um summer time view and then a winter time view and these are um Big and Little Spencer and you can probably guess which is which um but Big is is the big one and there's an interesting Big Spencer um I did that um years and years ago when I was writing my thesis that was one of the mountains that I did um and it used to have an old Warden's cabin at the top or near that it was like halfway up actually it wasn't you know you'd have to keep climbing um which as Warden cabins usually are um and I remember I went up years later and the Warden's cabin had been taken down as sometimes they are because they get a little bit um unsafe and so people aren't in out of them and um the state worries that they're going to crash down on hikers so that had been taken down and then I got to the top and I don't know if you guys remember but a um a communications work crew was up at the top years ago and um a fire caught in the black spruce at the top um from one of their I don't know maybe campfires or something and so I remember I got to the top and there was just like it was horrible it was just like black um and you could see the remnants of their camp they just left behind and all this stuff and it was horrible but I've heard I hear that it has been has recovered since but um a good lesson I guess to be very safe with fires especially the top of those mountains those black spruce trees are super old and uh I think once you get into the root system it can be a big problem um once the fire gets into the roots um and to I think this is the final hike I wanted to make sure I wrapped it up um pretty quick but um I wanted to mention horse mountain in Baxter State Park um and this is kind of my representative ambassador mountain for the north end of the park everybody a lot of people go in the south end um because they're headed to Katahdin and that's how you get to Katahdin and a lot of the mountains around Katahdin um but I talked with some rangers years back and one of them said you know my favorite part is the north end of the park and nobody ever goes up there um and so you go through a completely different gate um it's Madagam and gate and um there's a beautiful camp ground up there a couple places that you can stay and that's how you get to Traveler Mountain which is one of the more popular loops so the Traveler loops is up there in the north end um and that I would say is as challenging as Katahdin um it might be a controversial thing to say but if you do the whole Traveler loop um it would probably be as difficult as climbing Katahdin um and um but there's some other small really great mountains up there so horse mountain is one of them and I actually when we were at the campground I went and um did horse mountain in the afternoon with my mom so it's a fun little hike um that you doesn't have to take you all day which I like those types about three miles out and back and it's it's gradual and like a continual climb the whole way up and there's actually the view is not at the summit it's right before the summit and there's this beautiful bald outcropping and then nearby you've got trout brook mountain as well which is another great little hike and it also has some nice views um but horse mountain so this is the view from the east spur overlook and then um when I was pretty proud because I was bringing my mom out in the afternoon and we saw a um that barred owl right there sitting in the tree just staring at us um so I felt like a good guide to be able to show her this beautiful animal but you can never count on that of course um and um these are some view this some a view from trout brook mountain so um pretty nice little view for a smaller mountain in the north end and then this is the traveler range and that's just a really special hike um I would suggest doing it in the fall because it's absolutely gorgeous in the fall but um it's it's arduous I will say that it's it's a challenge and I did want to just offer if any of you guys want to contact me um because I'm no longer working full-time for the banger daily news my email has changed so it's just kind of like my personal email so it's two a's because my middle name is ann and then sarnaki at gmail.com and um and then I'm one minute hike girl because my column was one minute hikes for so long it was I don't know if it's still referred to that in print it might be um sometimes off and on but um so it's one minute hike girl or instagram I recently changed my handle the main nature hikes because that is hopefully what my new guiding company is going to be called so we're getting underway kind of at least with the photos part of it and we'll see how the rest falls in place um yeah so I guess I'll open it up for questions and I'll stop sharing my screen so you guys can see me here we go I guess that I'm going to um ask some questions as you post them and I hope we'll get a lot of them because I know we have a lot of hikers on this call so um please feel free to do that let's see oh I asked the first question funnily enough so um I uh was asking because I've run into some uh difficulties as I've hiked especially by myself can you share with us some of the uh oh moments you've encountered and how you got beyond them oh I love I love that I and I talk about it a little bit in my book some of these uh oh moments because everybody learns from making mistakes um but one one that I like to tell is I was on old speck mountain early in my hiking days um actually for my thesis writing my thesis because I went on um 10 different big mountain hikes throughout Maine to do my thesis back in college and um I was out there by myself because I did a lot of them solo just kind of um uh so I and I was almost done I was up because old speck at mountain is a pretty big mountain in western Maine it's right on the Appalachian trail and you get to the top there's beautiful tower you go past that and you get to old speck pond which is one of I think it's the highest elevation pond in Maine um and then I was headed back down and I was at one of the last overlooks and I'm standing there looking out over the terrain and I'm holding onto a tree and um I get done looking and I step forward trip on the tree root and fall flat on my face on this like just rock shelf and I remember my sunglasses flew off my head and skittered down the rock shelf and almost fell off like the cliff um and I remember just laying there being like face down and being like am I okay like can I feel my hands and all that and I was perfectly fine I got up but I was scraped on my whole my hands and my knees and all down my legs was really bad um just abrasions and so I was bleeding all over the place I look crazy um and I remember I didn't have I didn't have first aid I didn't have any anything with me to you know just patch myself up and um ended up I was like close to the you know I was lucky and I was close to the trailhead so I've just walked down all defeated and I remember stopping in a stream and trying to wash myself off a little and trying to put some like leaves on my hands to stop the bleeding and um then I walk by this this group's coming up and a bunch of little boys and it was a it was a Boy Scout group with their leaders and they looked at me like I was something out of a horror movie you know and they were just like I was so embarrassed because I was perfectly fine but I looked terrible um and one of the boys is like do you need first aid and I still remember being like no I'm okay I'm like I'll get to it I'll get to the trailhead soon like and I just felt so like this little boy's more prepared than me and I actually should have let him give me first aid because he probably would have gotten a patch for that but um in hindsight but after that I went and bought myself a first aid kit and always carry it with me now and so it's like you don't know what's going to happen and that wasn't a very big deal but it taught me a valuable lesson to have things like a first aid kit and to have just a few survival items because say I like had broken my ankle or something I would just need like a space blanket or I prefer like a a number emergency bivvy to keep myself warm for the night and I would have been fine someone would have come and found me you know um so just having like a few survival items I've heard that every good woodsman should go out into the woods with a means to make fire so just like waterproof matches are lighter um you know a knife and um you know a way to have water so it's just thinking of those like essential things that you need and and you can really slim down your your kit your first aid and survival kit look it over don't just buy like a pre-made kit either like look into it and see if it has what you need um because you never know when you're going to need it and when a a Boy Scout troop will come along or not um next question um where can we get copies of your books I know I got mine at um left bank books in Belfast and I'm always proud to promote that bookstore great yeah local bookstores are great at carrying it um in my area like the Briar Patch in Bangor they carry it and Epic Sports in Bangor carries it and I wish I had like a I've asked my publisher like do you have a list of the stores that carry it and they just don't offer that and they don't keep track of that unfortunately um but I would try your local bookstore for sure I've always been pleasantly surprised when I go into local bookstores and find it um it is available online yeah but local bookstores yes um love this question have you seen any cool wildlife besides the owl yeah I get lucky sometimes I've never seen a bear while I'm out there so people always ask me about bears I think because they're scared but I they run the other way I think um um let's see I've I've come across a number of deer um pretty close I I was in a field once with like a tall vegetation and almost like we almost like stepped on each other it was so we were so close um and I've done a lot of wildlife photography um so I'll go out and actually seek wildlife pretty often so I've seen like a lot of eagles I've seen snowy owls um specifically looking for them um try to think of one of the coolest wildlife experiences I've had I've seen porcupines fighting but that was right at my house so that wasn't on a hike that's really weird um yeah I see a lot of different birds um I've seen a mink while I was um along the shore I didn't really know what it was it was weaving in and out of seaweed and I guess they they eat stuff along the coast um so I've seen a mink um I've seen puffins I guess that's one of the coolest things that I've seen is um I got to go and visit a puffin island twice and got to go see the puffins with um biologists and get to go into the burrows and see the baby puffins that while they measured them and made sure they were all healthy and stuff um that was one of the cooler things and I have seen a bear but only because I went out with biologists to see the bears in the winter time as they were hibernating and again it was a part of a study next question can you recommend other hikes with paddling options one cool one that if you like to go out and do like a real exploration out in the boonies um is a lobster mountain and lobster lake and you start on lobster stream and it's in lobster township so you won't forget any of that someone was not or maybe they were really creative and the lake they say is they're shaped like a lobster's claw and that's why or um it's because of the is it crayfish or something that look kind of like lobster that are in the lake they're not sure why that was named to that because it's out in the not even close to the coast it's um north of moosehead lake uh way way up there um north of moosehead lakes you have to go all the way around moosehead um and then you park and so my husband and I did this we brought a canoe we brought our dog and um you paddle down lobster stream into lobster lake um and around the edge of the lake really is how I found it um and there's a trailhead sign and then you can hike up lobster mountain to a beautiful view um and you can camp out there if you want there's beautiful campgrounds on lobster lake yeah sandy sandy beaches too good um another water related question any river trips um we haven't done a lot of river trips um I've done some paddling on the panab scott river with people who are a little bit more um experienced um just because I think it's so cool now that the dams are down how much the river has kind of renewed itself and it is a great opportunity to see eagles if you ever want to paddle on the panab sky it's like man every 10 minutes they're seeing an eagle because that that's just rich in that area um yeah but we haven't done a lot of river trips I mostly do lakes and ponds and uh we just got sea kayaks last year so we'll see where that leads us it opens up possibilities when you have two sealed bulkheads you feel a little bit safer so and we've been taking um courses on how to we took a course from casting kayaks they do a lot of um skills courses if you're interested and uh we did a course on how to get back in your kayak if you fall out which now we feel empowered so great it's a question about beavers um someone says we saw evidence of them around jordan pond on a katie but didn't see the animals themselves yeah I've seen beavers a lot um but it's hard because in the middle of the day when a lot of people are hiking they're not necessarily as active um you kind of have to get lucky it's fun also to see them in the winter because sometimes they'll come out of their little huts in the winter time um if they have place to swim but um we've seen a lot of evidence of beavers it's amazing what they can do and how big of trees they can fell um and I remember once I was up in a roostick um national wildlife refuge they have a lot of opportunity that in moose horn national wildlife refuge I don't know what it is about national wildlife refuges but I've seen beavers there in the middle of the day just paddling around and flipping their tails at you which tells you that they're not happy with you so then you back off I've had two dogs jace beaver beavers yeah I think the beavers would win I think so too they're they've got some teeth um several comments praising lobster lake for those of you who are reading the chats and I think it's a place that would be nice for a Sierra Club hike I have um I have a question about hiking and and walking for people who may have disabilities or just feeling hesitant about getting out might feel like they might be vulnerable because they're older etc yeah I think it's a great question there are some there are some options in Maine I I looked into this this is one of the um stories that I did right before I left the BDN because it was something that was on my mind for years and it was a challenging thing to write um so I have put at least one resource out there now that lists some wheelchair accessible trails um or ADA compliant trails I guess is what I'd call it because really these ADA compliant trails are very strict guidelines about barriers to people and the surface and the grade I did a lot of research into what makes a trail ADA compliant and it has to be certain width and it can't be too steep um and um so it takes a lot for a trail organization to a lot of funding really to create a trail like that in Maine in a place where we have so many roots and rocks and so it's remarkable that we do have quite a few of these trails but um I think I talked to a fellow from the state um um he's in charge of outdoor recreation in the state he says there's always something on their mind and that it's a work in progress that I think you're going to see more and more of these trails pop up and I have over the years seen more and more accessible trails pop up which is just awesome um and you know it's good for people in wheelchairs but it's good for people who use any type of mobility device or want to use their stroller with their newborn baby um you know so it's um want to you know there's there's a quite a few um now and I would look at also the um rail trails because Maine has that wonderful rail trail that goes through the whole a big section of the state um and and that's a great opportunity as well um but in addition there's a lot of trails that don't meet ADA standards but are easy um and so they might have a few barriers here and there or they might be a little bit narrower than a trail that um is ADA compliant so there's a lot of easy trails out there and I've noticed that a lot of local land trusts are in charge of a lot of those easier trails so if you're interested in just not these crazy hikes but maybe some easier shorter hikes um I would definitely check out your local land trust and the way I do it um as I go to the Maine Land Trust Network it's ML on Maine Land Trust Network yeah it's that abbreviated and that website so it's ml mltn.org um and that website you can it breaks it down into different counties so you can check out what land trusts are active in your county and so I highly suggest that and also my book Family Friendly Hikes in Maine has a lot of trails that are easy um and trails that are part of Trail Network so you don't like you can go out and do like a third of the Trail Network and not feel like you turned around too soon or whatever because um trail networks kind of leave it up to you how much you want to do and yeah all right I know we have hikers on this call and you're probably dying to ask questions I think we can take about five more minutes or so so um post them up there let's see what you have to say anybody got anything yeah I've got tons of questions there's one more in the chat from Claudia um how do you dress or pack for winter hikes that's a great question I started my column in November and I never hiked in the winter before this was years ago um and so I had to learn that fast and I've kind of learned over the years some tips um things that worked and didn't work um so basically just dress in layers because you get surprisingly warm on a lot of winter hikes like I've stripped down to snowshoeing in my t-shirt and snow pants which looks ridiculous in in March when the sun is so warm and we're getting those longer days back um so I would dress in a lot of layers and avoid cotton when at all possible because cotton holds onto moisture and then cools your body down so if you like sweat or because you're going to sweat when you hiked try not to as much as you can when you winter hike and do that by taking off layers but you're still going to sweat and so wearing synthetics or there's some really really soft wool now but it's expensive like marinal wool um but I have a base layer that's marinal wool and it's super thin and it's amazing how warm it keeps me um and it's like odor resistant so you can wear it a few times Robert Pantel PA and T. E. L. I'm a track connected to you what was that oh I don't think um yeah okay I will put in a plug for my favorite box store in Maine Rennies um you can get marinal wool uh blends at at Rennies during hunting season and it's really they're really cheap the shirts are really cheap the long underwear is really cheap and it's wonderful yeah um Becky has a question what all right oh Becky has a question about Isla Ho. Sure I think I'm oh I thought I was muted I just have you hiked on Isla Ho? I have I have I went out with two women in early spring um and we stayed at one of the camp sites out in Isla Ho so we took um the the is it the mail mail carrier ferry type thing across um we actually took our bikes because to get to the camp grounds from that drop off point is pretty far on a road you can also hike it someone came across with backpacks and they a couple and they hiked through and there was there's a trail that you can hike through um but we wanted to get the campsite kind of early so we brought our bikes and pedaled in um and the the campsites are absolutely beautiful and quiet and just like surrounded by this beautiful forest and it's kind of it's close to the shore you can go down check out the shore um and we hiked around there's these nice little hills and uh like rocky rocky hills on Isla Ho so there's plenty of opportunities for hiking but we just stayed the one day so we stayed the one night and then we hiked the next morning and then bikes back out um but I'm sure people stay longer I do know it can be tough to reserve camping there that you have to do it really you have to be on it and do it ahead of time we actually the only reason I think we got a spot um like we did is because we went in early May and um which is actually kind of cool because there were no bugs and we could just stay in the lean to without a tent and uh look at the stars and uh wear winter hats so this is an interesting experience I wanted to mention uh can I just say one thing sure it's merino wool because it's a merino sheep uh just so you that that's where the wool comes from so just I'm a farmer so I just wanted to give you that piece of information that's awesome yeah thank you I love uh I love the fabric I also really like um I have alpaca socks which are great too just go with the natural fibers it really does help um yeah and they're made in Maine yeah yeah alpaca socks yeah I know I love them so much well it's five minutes till the hour if um if anybody has any more questions or comments or let me just remind you all that this community conversations episode is going to be archived on our website um Sierra Club Maine so um tell your friends if they wanted to come but couldn't it's a great place to get a lot of good information and um I'm just loving these books and I hope that you will check them out you could borrow mine but not for a while because they're all going to be dog-eared and messy um so yeah I guess that's it for this condor this community conversations and thank you so much Aislin I'm personally going to contact you about hiking so thank you so much please do yes yes and others are encouraged as well thank you so much Aislin I did want to share my screen just to remind people of the um hike that the our outings team is putting on on Memorial Day which is May 31st it's at 2pm and I will actually put a link in the chat if you're interested you can register for the hike so I hope to see some people there and thank you Aislin it was so awesome to hear about all your different hikes I know me and my husband are definitely going to try some and to see all of those awesome photos thank you so much yes thanks everybody for joining us


Okay, good afternoon. I apologize for getting on here a little late. I had some Zoom issues, but I'm on now. Happy Tuesday. I hope folks had a relaxing, if possible weekend and ready to start the week. Thank you very much for joining us today in our latest town hall, virtual town hall. Today's focus is on update regarding COVID and how we are going to be reopening our campus very shortly. So for the this afternoon, I'm going to have Francesca Finder and David Memke give a presentation, then I will be helping answer the questions that came through in advance from you all. Thank you, reminders. Thank you very much, Heather for sending those out, and then we'll be responding to questions that come up during the chat. And then that will take us to three o'clock. Additional information or anything follow up will take care of afterwards and we will definitely be sure and update the campus and post appropriate information on various areas of campus such as president's page website court coronavirus web page to make sure the campus is notified and communicated with. And with that, I will turn it over to Francesca and David. Thank you. Good afternoon Highline College. My name is David Menke. I'm the director of public safety and emergency management. Hi Francesca Finder associate director of public safety and emergency management. And I need to be able to share my screen please. All right so today we'd like to talk about the phased return to services plan, which is our plan to return services to the campus, and it's going to be in a phased cautious and flexible manner. And first of all, I'd like to thank everybody that's a part of the ICS team and executive cabinet who have worked hard and supported us during this unprecedented time. So, today I want you to know that this plan wasn't just something that we, you know, devise together and came up with in a room. What we did is look at all the resources out there. And a lot of it is guidance and best practices on how to move forward. The only one that is actually regulatory and is going to give a specific guidance of how to reopen is going to be coming from Washington state safe start plan. So within phase one we were given special guidance for higher education. And for phase two we're still currently waiting for that phase two guidance. So you can see that we pulled information from OSHA, the CDC public health department. There's other ones on here, such as L and I, and then Washington states the biggest one that really tells us how to move forward. And before we begin talking about our phases, you know, we want to talk about a couple things that we know are bringing people stress and anxiety and kind of address those first to kind of help reduce some of that. And some of that is that the college is not going to bring everybody back at once. So, you know, some of those things that I hear is people are worried about how it's going to look when everybody comes back all at once. And that's not the plan at all with this phased approach. Highline doesn't have to keep pace with Washington state. So if our Washington state moves to phase two on June 1, Highline College, if we don't have the proper resources, we don't feel like we have everything ready, then we may delay that start of our phase two. And it could be a couple days later, a couple weeks later, a month later. So really we don't, there's nothing that keeps us on track with Washington states phase two. We do, we can't, however, start our phase two prior to Washington states phase two. So there is that limitation. And then those employees that continue to be in a high risk category or have family members are caring for in a high risk family are our high risk family members. They're still encouraged to work from home, they're still encouraged to communicate with their supervisor and make sure their concerns are met as well. So this is the Washington state safe start plan that you've seen on the news and I want you to know just from the beginning this isn't meant for you to be able to read it's just to show an overview of how Washington states plan is and you see it's four phases, which we actually adopted the same four phases, and try to align ours, the best that we could with the information that we have with Washington states. So this is our phase return, we're going to go into it in more detail so I'm not going to go over every single phase on the slide it's just to kind of show you how ours is modeled. The only thing that you'll see that is different within ours is that we broke, broke up part two. So phase two is going to actually be two parts which we'll discuss further and go into detail. But we just kind of want to show you how Washington state has four phases and how Highland College is also following that same model of four phases. Now you see the arrow at the bottom that we can go forward and we can also move back and you hear the same thing on the news with the governor safe start plan. If we go into phase two and never start going up and the risk to the state starts getting higher we can return back to phase one as needed, and so on as we go through these phases. So right now we're currently in phase one, and everything is pretty much what you're living right now we have emergency remote learning occurring on online. We only have essential employees coming on campus and those are all through approval with our VPs and you know as they are approved to come on campus. We use that information for tracing if needed and then we also pass that information to the custodian so they can kind of clean those areas in the evening of any areas that were used during the day. And the newest part is that the clinical nursing labs have been approved and are an essential service and right now they're being held under the supervision of our coven 19 supervisor. So this is Washington State's phase two plan. And you'll see that the gatherings are no more than five people outside your household per week. So we're kind of following the same guidance. The one part that we did pull is from the businesses because that's what we are modeling ours after after right now with the information that we have. Like I said we're still waiting on the higher ed guidance. But one thing that we did notice about the business and we feel higher ed is going to be the same way is unlike restaurants employees can still screen themselves at home. So I know the restaurants they have to screen everybody. Once they get to work but if you look at the businesses guidance they do not have to do that and I feel higher ed is probably going to fall within that same category. So this is our phase two a summary. And like I said we're breaking up into two pieces for a reason. One we want to bring back those employees to those areas to make sure that they acclimate to their working areas and we that everything is safe before bringing students on and trying to handle everything all at once. So a lot of people are asking what is this limit services in phase two. And honestly at this point, you know without this new higher education guidance for phase two. We don't we're not even 100% sure what that looks like. But my guess is going to be that each VP will decide in their area. What is their limited services once the guidance comes out. Once a VP decides that certain limited services such as areas and student services are approved, then we would work with those areas to kind of bring them back onto campus. And it's not going to be if we take the cashiers for example it's not going to be all for employees just coming back into that office at one day, trying to figure out how to start working out of that office. We'd probably bring the supervisor back, work with the facilities team work with public safety, maybe work with our social distancing unit to kind of implement safety measures within that area, whether it's plexiglass screen, you know, making sure that they have the precautions they need there, it might be footprints on the ground where people would wait. But in our phase two, which I'll get to in a minute we won't actually need the footprints for a reason. And I'll talk about them in a second. And then we're also have some guidance that we're going to be providing to those areas, how to set up their office and then how to best implement best practices. And then when we go into phase two we feel comfortable that employees are back on campus, and that the areas are set up the way we want you know there's no risk to the employees, we're not rushing. We can start possibly bring students back in our phase two be by appointment only. And so these would be limited services, only bringing back these appointments and so buildings would still be locked, it wouldn't be the campus would not be open to the public. PPE would be provided to anybody that would need it within the for employees and students. And right now, I know the PPE has been a kind of a question that people have been asking about with mask and everything else. You know, right now the campus itself does not have any policies regarding mask, the wear a mask or how to incorporate that. So that is one thing that we would have to look at and decide if we want a policy around mask and if that needs to go to the PDC for possible, you know, temporary policy or even a permanent policy. Another thing we are going to be doing is contact information will be collected from students who do come on campus for their appointments and right now, we have to maintain that for 30 days that way if somebody does get sick we can go back through who was on campus who was around them, and who had close contact with those individuals for so we can notify those that might have been at risk. And right now close contact, even though we were taught a different way through the course, we're going to use the CDC definition, which is anybody who has close contact less than six, six feet with somebody for more than 10 minutes. And then at this time I'm going to turn it over to Francesca. Thank you. Okay, so we're looking at the Washington State phase three diagram here and you can see that this is the phase where operationally things start to change a lot. The indicator of that is that you can gather with more or no more than 50 people which is a huge change from what we're living at right now. You can see restaurants are allowed to open at 75% capacity movie theaters at 50% and libraries and museums will be open as well. So quite a bit of a difference between what we're at right now and even between phase two. So looking at this, I think we can safely assume that the state thinks in phase three that the viral risk of catching COVID-19 will be a lot less and therefore it'll be safer to gather with up to 50 people. And that there will probably be a huge decline in confirmed cases in our state in order to go into phase three. Thank you. And before we go into the Highland Colleges phase three diagram we wanted to hit phase four really fast because it seems in phase four that the state is saying life will pretty much resume as it was before COVID-19. We can gather with more than 50 people. Everything seems to be opening back up in four, including large sporting events. So there may be a few things in our life that become a new normal that stick around for a while. But it seems like in phase four life before COVID-19 returns for the most part. Okay, so let me flip my own note pager. For the Highland Phase Return to Services phase three, we're working off a lot of assumptions here. There haven't been guidelines that come out for phase three yet. And I think that's because we're still working on what phase two is going to look like. The, I think David already said this, but the higher ed phase two guidelines is in the approval process in the state of Washington and hasn't actually been approved yet, which means higher ed hasn't actually been approved to open in phase two when the rest of the state goes into phase two. As of yet, they were still going through the approval process. So that being said, we definitely don't have guidelines for what phase three would look like in higher ed. But here are some assumptions that based off of the state plan, we thought we would probably see it on campus. And that's that a lot of our services and our employees would return. It could be that some offices still encourage online appointments for students and online resources, but that most employees and most offices and services return in some sort of capacity. So we probably expect to see people some offices on a flexible schedule, meaning there's maybe some employees in offices that work from home some days and work in the office some other days throughout the week to kind of break up how many people are in the office at once. And I think that we will be able to assume that there you go. We'll be able to assume that people will be able to use the campus more freely again. So we hope that we hope that we can loosen restrictions on conference rooms, how computer labs are used, how students are able to use access and walk around places like the library, or just areas that they used to kind of congregate and meet these areas should start to go back to being used how they were intended to. And then phase four, like the state said it's pretty much life before COVID-19. So we haven't made many assumptions or plans around phase four at all. So as we start to bring limited services back in phase to be and then more services back in phase three, we created a document. We've been calling it the health first document. I asked the ICS to help me come up with a better name and nobody gave me any suggestions. So we keep calling it the health first document. We broke it up into two sections. The first section is kind of a collection of all the best practices that we've gathered from public health CDC, the state of Washington as to safely as safely as we can reopening offices and services. And then it also lists ways in which you can implement this within your own space. The two of the document is more interactive. We understand that every space on campus is unique and kind of poses its own challenges when it comes to infection prevention. So phase or part two allows offices to talk about their unique vulnerabilities within their team, kind of list them out and then it guides people, hopefully, into figuring out ways and processes to implement infection prevention that will work for your specific office area. So for some offices that might be opening up in phase two, where things are pretty restricted and there's a lot of compliance measures that we have to meet. It could be that you know let's take financial aid for example they have a service desk that doesn't have a barrier, it could be that we decide to move that service desk and that is just an example by the way. We move that service desk to a conference area space where there's more room to implement barriers and other infection prevention measures and there's a lot more room for social distancing in there. Yeah, the part two of that document kind of helps offices design and think about infection prevention as it pertains to their specific office but this in no way means that offices are on their own for implementing these things and thinking of their own infection prevention measures this just means we want you to think about it in accordance with your unique space and then the social distancing unit will help you implement these things that you've kind of laid out and analyzed already, but it in no ways means that you're alone. Okay. Yeah. Was this the next one. Okay. So as everybody starts returning in whatever phase gets approved for your specific office, everybody is going to need the same exact PPE or supplies. We've decided to centralize the supplies that we're going to be gathering so as your particular office returns whenever it does. I'm going to remind this is you'll be welcomed back with a welcome back box and in that box will be spray bottles with disinfectant, hopefully sanitation wipes, cloth masks disposable masks and gloves. I'm not sure if David mentioned it or not, but we will provide cloth masks to employees who don't already have one. They are on order. They have not come to the campus yet, but they are on order. And these are based on supply availability. So I'm sure that you guys have imagined that as the state starts to collectively open up and guidelines, you know, tell us what PPE we need. Every office, every business, every higher ed institution that's opening up is going to be competing for all of the same supplies. So we didn't want all of our own departments also competing for those supplies with the purchasing department. We'll try their best to make sure that we have a steady inventory of these things. But we hope that we could stock the box with enough of these items to last you at least a month, and we'll figure out a process for getting you more if you should need more. But that is the idea behind the welcome back box. And then contact tracing last but not least, David myself and Ashley Smith are graduates of Johns Hopkins University contact tracing course. The state hasn't come out yet with explicit guidance about how they want colleges to perform their own contact tracing but we figured that we would take the course and be educated just in case they do rely on us to do our own contact tracing so the next summary contact tracing is when somebody is infected so let's say David monkey contracts COVID-19.  When he was at the offices and I would see who he was in close contact with from employees or if he had appointments with students that would be a list we would keep as well that's the daily roll call you see there. If he was in close contact with say myself or Ashley Smith or another one of those officers. We would privately contact those people that he was deemed in close contact with and let them know that they were considered in close contact with somebody who has a confirmed case and they'll have to quarantine for 14 days. This turned out to be an effective way we learned through the course of one of the ways that Ebola was stopped when they had the outbreak so it's one of the things that the public health system will be using here. All right. So if we could leave you with a couple three big takeaways from this presentation and I'm sure you guys will have a lot of questions I see the Q&A thing lining up over there. The return to services is phased. We're not bringing everybody back at once. We're going to follow the Washington state phases, we're going to follow their guidance. It is cautious, you know, first we're trying to bring back employees and see what infection prevention measures we need to implement how we can implement them, letting employees acclimate to what is this new normal that we're in. Flexibility, I've kind of seen this example already when the nursing labs opened and they had a compliance sheet that made other colleges cry. And our lab instructor, clinical lab instructors and Nikki Bly looked at that sheet and they made it work. They were flexible enough to bring our labs back on campus and what in these compliance measures are not always easy but we've remained flexible. I hope that we can kind of bring that flexibility into phase two to A to B and three as well. This is not always going to be easy, that's why we put in the embracing complexity phrase in phase two A there because the compliance measures, it is going to be complex to comply with them, make sure people feel comfortable, make sure that people are protected and still provide services or try to provide services like we did before this all happened. So those are the three takeaways that I hope you guys come back with. Just as a reference point, this is a list of everybody in the incident command system. I gave these names to thank them and also, if you work closely with one of these people or you kind of have more access or you feel comfortable asking questions to somebody on this list, please use them as a resource because even if they may not have the answer to the question you're asking about our phased services plan return to services plan they know who in the ICS could help you answer that question. So don't I mean not everything has to come through David and I we of course don't mind but also if you're you know comfortable asking somebody that you see on this list, please use them as a resource. And then I'll get to questions and just a second I wanted to did you want to pull up that phase diagram David. One of the things that will be emailing out along with this PowerPoint for you to digest at your own time is the Highline phase return to services plan where everything that we kind of quickly went over here is laid out. So we'll be sending this out digitally. Thank you to go over. And then if you have any questions you're more than welcome to either send it to David, myself or the ask at Highline.edu email account as well. I'm pretty sure is a good resource for questions. We have important notes about the phases down at the bottom. So hopefully, if we went through this way too fast for your liking, or we skipped over something that you found very important for yourself. Hopefully it can be answered in one of these documents and if it can't then please reach out to us. Did you mention these will be sent out this week. I think I did but just in case these will be sent out this week. We're ready for questions. Thank you. Thank you David thank you Francesca. I wanted to make sure I stepped away for about 30 seconds but did we officially announced who are coven 19 compliant supervisor. Yes, we did we mention that who that person is. We did not talk to most week. Okay, we should go ahead and do that just so we we let people know. Yes, so we've been working with executive cabinet to decide who the coven 19 supervisor would be to oversee the medical labs that come on campus and just because of all the work that has been done. Nikki Bly was offered and accepted the position for the coven 19 supervisor. And she's been doing an outstanding job, just implementing everything that needs to be put in place, creating the whole practice which is actually being used by other colleges. And like Francesca mentioned people were looking at all the requirements were scared and you know she was able to create these documents that everybody else is asking for so really appreciate her. Thank you so much Francesca for the patience and everything that she's done to help get us started for phase one. Great. Thank you. So you two ready for the questions. Yes, sir. Okay, I got some that were submitted in advance and then we have a number as Francesca said, in the q amp a which we were expecting so I will start. In the case of decisions are made and bodies and make them, for example, to traditional administrative hierarchy, the Board of Trustees Union leadership faculty Senate cost policy development council for example, the ICS often bypasses these bodies and processes, how are decisions being made as to when to bypass these normal decision making bodies and processes, and how are these bodies informed of these decisions. All right, thank you for the question. So, this pandemic is kind of different than what a lot of ICS to see, because a lot of times we're working hand in hand with the police or the fire department, or some other agency for an emergency and media emergency that has an immediate danger to the campus. And so on those we have to make decisions right away with the police and don't always have time to go ask other bodies for opinions or to make decisions. But with this one, we've been able to take our time and kind of look at the plans and look at the resources to make some decisions and take our time to make these decisions. A lot of what ICS has been doing in this pandemic is different than what you would normally see, or more or less gathering the guidance and making recommendations that actually goes to executive cabinet. And within the ICS structure, we have all the members of the executive cabinet as well. So, there is a lot of flexibility with that because we have all those members within the ICS and being able to meet once a week. And then separately we have units that also meet and they make a lot of recommendations as well. And one thing that we have worked for is trying to get to make sure that we have representation from all class of employees within our unit. So, if you take our social distancing unit, we try to have members from the WPA, HCEA, and any other class of employees just to make sure that all voices are heard. And it's not just that one member is going to make decisions for everybody. We actually asked them to take that information back and make sure that we get input from everybody. So, you know, if you're feeling like you don't know what's going on, you can talk to any of those people that you saw to try to get involved. And if you want to be in one of the units, I mean reach out to me and we can see if we can find a place to put you in one of the units as well. Thank you. I don't know what happened to Dr. Mosby, but David, did you want to answer the question to the King County mask one. The King County mask directive question. So, so the question. Oh, are you back Dr. Mosby. Yes, yes, I have no idea what happened. Zoom and I are not friends today. So basically just there's a question that was provided before the forum and then some questions in Q&A regarding mask at this point and how are they going to be going to be enforced. They're going to be required. What happens if people don't wear the mask. And we will be providing more information very soon about that in terms of, you know, anything from a temporary policy I think it's David mentioned to possibly a permanent policy. We're also looking to see getting guidance from CDC, and also looking at what what our other institutions, neighborhood institutions are doing as well. We do want to be as consistent as possible but first and foremost is to make sure that as we have people come back on campus that we're safe. That is our most important thing to really focus on if I'm on campus and I'll be back on campus for example I will be wearing a mask, not just for me but for everybody around. And that's the decision make and we just you know I will be modeling that for the campus. But we will have more information that will be coming out regarding mask and max policy and as I think folks have you know listened to the presentation, and then also on the news, a lot of this is evolving. And we things are being created as we go, because this is very and this is unprecedented time so that's what we will be focusing on and we'll have more information set out shortly. I would encourage there was a question that came out again about the phases and what are we doing to better define phases and what expected each phase and making sure that communication. Everyone understands it's on the same page regarding the different phases and again, making sure that certain basic questions can be answered. Some of the questions that came through is traffic flow safety tracking assumptions should be working from each phase. And what I would say to that is as David and Francesca said in their in their PowerPoint, and they have welcomed the opportunity to for folks to be able to review the information, provide feedback. We're, you know, again or learning as we go and we look forward to getting feedback from folks I know that I had asked a group of our classified community members to come together and to provide some recommendations and feedback and part of that is because many, many, many of our classified community is on the front lines and has that direct contact and that initial contact, and it's important to make sure that their voices heard and voices at the table and they have provided some, some recommendations and feedback which I really appreciated and we've incorporated those have been many of those have been incorporated into the PowerPoint, and then look forward to getting continued information and recommendations for them as well. And they think we had about 10 of our classified community members on campus. We had a good number of people who actually volunteered their time but we have be able to select 10 representing all the areas of campus, and they have been wonderful so many thanks to them for providing some information and recommendations to us that will help us in our planning efforts. What classes are the priority stated institutional for returning to face to face format with social distancing. What are the plans for AB ESL actually part one of the question. So, the state has allowed clinical nurses are clinical nursing labs to return for now but they actually have a longer list of lab type classes that are allowed to return in phase one. And then in phase two, we expect them to provide us one guidance of how to open up limited services when their plan is approved and then to they may also add on additional classes that are eligible for reopening under some probably pretty stringent guidelines. Everybody opening in lab or phase one right now like the labs have to commit to some pretty intense I've been calling them high intensity infection prevention measures so as we move into more phases I'm sure the list from the state of what we're allowed to open class and course wise will get lengthier but for now it seems for highlight its clinical labs that are approved and some other type of classes I think what was it agriculture or some type of agriculture one just got added to the list recently as well. So, I think as we move into phases we'll see more and more but you know we don't open up any type of course unless it's been approved by the state. So I answered part of the question and then that would also go for the abes all classes whenever we get the green light from the state then we can go ahead and start making plans for any type of course to start opening. Great and academic affairs vice president's office will be providing updates about when those programs going to be open. So, thank you. I think, Fred, Jessica and David, you did speak to this but I'm just going to ask the question anyway, read the question. What would the phase look like for staff and faculty that has underlying medical conditions, and would they be allowed to go back to the office, or if you recommend to continue working from home. Yeah, so, at least at what we've seen for phase two and phase three, anybody with an underlying medical condition or somebody who's caring for somebody with an underlying medical condition, or caring for an individual of one of those high risk categories, has the flexibility to continue working from home. And that's been added into all of our phased plans thus far and that's what we've seen directly from the state and the CDC as well. Okay. Thank you. Again, you probably already spoke about this but I just want to make sure I get. Everybody's heard. What happens when an individual comes back to work and is exposed to COVID-19. Yeah, so I guess that depends on if it's a process question or if it's a question more about I just don't feel comfortable coming back to work yet. So if it's a process question I can answer it like this if you come to work in your exposed to COVID-19 and we find out by contact tracing that you were exposed to COVID-19. So I'm going to take you from the contact tracing team will privately get in touch with you and let you know that you were in close contact with somebody who had a confirmed case and to be safe. You should quarantine and monitor your health for 14 days and hopefully we'll be able to kind of check in with those people to periodically throughout the 14 days. And about just not feeling comfortable coming back to work and whatever phase two phase three. That's also completely understandable and we encourage everyone to talk to their supervisor if that's the case if you've kind of heard all of the infection prevention implementations that we're going to be bringing and kind of gone through your office plan and you still don't feel comfortable for yourself just communicate that to your supervisor. And you see it in the state guidance that definitely in phase two, you know, nobody's being forced to come back to work before they feel comfortable. Thank you. We've had a couple people ask, can, can people other than the ones that were mentioned, take the contract contact excuse me training course. Is that open to people. Actually, we're not specifically chosen by Johns Hopkins University as much as I would like to think we personally called by the college but yeah it's a free course actually if people are interested we can send out the link it was very informative and had some timely information as well so if people are interested we can also send out the link to that course when we send out the PowerPoint. It would also be nice if they go through it that they can actually be a part of our contact tracing unit and you know help out if somebody were to become ill. Thank you. Is there any plan regard regarding elevators elevated usage on campus. How should we treat using the elevators. David I feel like I keep talking do you want to keep. We would probably have to research a little bit more but I definitely understand that there would be concerns because there isn't more than six feet within that elevator so in that situation, you know, we talk about phase two way where employees start coming back, and we would have to look at each building and kind of work with facilities and work with the guidance that we have to create best practices within that area. We certainly seem too much best practices surrounding elevators, but we could probably, especially when it's just appointments only, you know find out prior to if there's any access needs, and make it available to them. Now with the appointments we don't have to worry about multiple people in the elevator. That's going to be when we start getting into phase three, possibly phase four. I'm not talking to evening administrator, but so when we get into phase three and phase four. That's when we would have to start trying to figure out who would have priority of the elevators. What is the risk to the public and should we reduce who can go in the elevator so, you know, we're going to have to research that a little bit more, but my initially you know I would understand how only one person would be allowed in there. Thank you and we'll so we'll get more information be able to share that with campus. Heather if you can make sure and get that question. Hold that question so we can provide some information later. Thank you. Okay. Are we limiting both phase two sections to the under five people gathering what size of location would govern a gathering. So, within the phase two. Yes, that's one of the reasons why we were looking at the appointment oldie, so that it would be just the two you know they come on campus for the appointment. And there's really only two people there with minimal contact and all the plexiglass would be in place. Any of the safety preventive method measures would be in place. So it's not going to be more than five people. That's why we kind of work with appointment only and leaving the buildings closed. We will make sure that services are spaced out so like if you look over in building six where we have the cashiers right next to the registration. If it's too close we might have to move somebody like Francesca mentioned we might put some services in different buildings. And it's really trying to figure out what limited service each VP is going to request in their area, so that we can work with all those and make something work. So that's one of the reasons we are asking for what limited services would be in trying to find ways to space them out and accommodate them. Thank you. I think this question came up during the present presentation. But I'll read it anyway where do face regular face to face classes. So we haven't seen any guidance from the state yet that talks about bringing face to face classes back. We've seen some considerations that have come out from the CDC, but those are specifically titled considerations and we'll have to comply with the state guidelines that come out. We will have to start planning for it sometime in the future but because we're really depending on the state to kind of lead us into what kind of guidelines they like to bring face to face classes back under we're waiting until those come out and then we can start gathering probably a couple different teams and figuring out how we can implement them back into our, our quarters, but nothing has come back out from this day yet if you see if you look at the phase. The states phase plans you won't even see actually higher ed called out in there yet and if you remember that's because not officially yet do we even have the authorization to come back for face to yet so we'll have to wait for their, their guidelines to come out hopefully soon. And if I may add a little bit on what Francesca was saying. I did check with the governor's office and we are to, we are about a week to two weeks away from getting any kind of confirmation about higher ed some proposal was submitted. But obviously it has to get approved to various channels through the CTC system. So we were informed it would be up to two weeks before we heard back anything official. Once we, once I receive that information, I then will make sure and communicate that to the appropriate folks and ultimately to campus. So it's coming, but we still have a few weeks away and speaking of phases, one individual had had really referenced kind of falling up to what you were saying, Francesca is that, you know phase three just looks, you know, includes strong social distancing recommendations and barriers so it seems that majority face to face classes won't be back until later phases. So like phase four. So the individual talked about this is very fluid at this point but is that pretty much the thinking that the late phases would be the late phases would be the ones that would have the face to face classes. That is how David and I have interpreted it as well. And I think for the majority of people anyway, if you've seen what the clinical nursing labs have the restrictions that they have to open under, trust me, you don't have to open until phase three anyway. There's a lot of preventative measures that they have to comply with. So I do think that for the majority of face to face classes you're right Dr. Mosby it's probably not until like a phase three or phase four type thing. And during our presentation we talked about assumptions. And if you look at the state phases like phase two it says gatherings of less than five per week. So that's one of the assumptions that we're basing it off of so our classes are clear, clearly more than five people. So we don't see it opening up in phase two, phase three we're looking at groups of less than 50 so you know there's a possibility that some of them could open in three, but it's just hard you know we're just making assumptions at this point. If it helps to kind of add on for the faculty member that it's been in our social distancing unit kind of also asking these same questions. I told him I think the best advice I could give him right now is kind of think about what is the most social distancing you could reasonably implement in your classes right now what are the most preventative measures you could implement reasonably within your classes and kind of prepare yourself for that situation. In the meantime, and then once the guidance comes out will be able to have a lot better idea of what we're looking at. So this was this question was talking about faculty needing guidance and suggestions around office hours during these phases once back on campus given the size of faculty offices and in particular referencing building 15 and 18. The continuation of zoom office hours might be best until phase four. I would definitely agree that you know if there are services that we can still provide via zoom that's you know that's things we have to look at. And the bottom line is going to be safety. And then what are the students need so is there a reason to bring it back on campus so yes we do have students that don't have access to technology don't have internet access. So we might have to find other ways around it and provide a way for them to have office hours. Maybe it's not within your small con confines of your office and maybe you use conference rooms for office hours. That's things that we would have to look at during these phases as things are allowed to open up and come back on campus. But if there is a way to do services still remotely. You know that's one thing we'll have to take into consideration as well just to keep our staff safe and to keep students safe. A couple questions regarding Plexi Plexi glass. If I said that correctly. Any discussions on on Plexi glass placing are using Plexi glass barriers or similar barriers that you see in grocery store and grocery store in areas where students interact with staff and faculty. And then along the lines of that the other question I received is public workstation. Will that be protected with the Plexi Glass partition. What measures are in place for no touch checking student in for appointments. Will face covers be available to everyone. We talked about that. How often will these will these stations be sams sized over to go ahead and take that one. Yes. So within phase to you know we're working with facilities to kind of do a walkthrough and it's not just us and facilities. It's also whoever the supervisor is of that area. So we looked at some of the areas that were possibly looking at limited services within building six. So we walked around with that Dean. It was virtually via zoom and a cell phone holding it up looking at the different areas and saying you know does this window right here suffice. Should we put Plexi Glass and can we move this workstation somewhere else. So yes within phase to we do want to use Plexi Glass we want to use any type of barriers as much as possible. But as we move into different phases we might start reducing some of those needs as more services come on because when we start saying that you know groups of less than 50 can come on campus. We're saying the risk is a lot less. And then when we have groups of 50 or more. There's a minimal risk to the campus so we really have to look at how many services are being brought on the campus and what is the risk to the campus at that time. But I would say within two we still have a high enough risk that as many barriers as possible gloves mask everything should be implemented. But then we kind of have to see what's going on when we get to phase three and four what the best practices are what the guidance is and hopefully we can start reducing some of those barriers. But if at the time that they decide to bring on more services during phase three and they still are recommending barriers and that's probably what we're going to go with is whatever best practice and recommendations are. Okay. Thank you. What is the probability for fall quarter that fall quarter will be able to have face to face classes given the standard classrooms, given a standard classrooms cannot accommodate social distancing. This faculty member reference in their department. There was a decision made to list all fall classes as face to face, which is very optimistic to the faculty member. Would it be preferable to advertise the courses as virtual. No, I actually, I don't quite know how to answer this without just kind of repeating myself. Again, but we really are dependent upon the state's phases and also the state guidance. So if we're in phase two and more than likely we're not going to see regular face to face classes resuming in phase two, because you still can't meet with, you know, more than five people outside of your household. I don't know how the summer is going to look but I would think that I'm not sure we're going to get to phase three by the end of the summer but then again I don't know I'm not the one with the data. So yeah, in fear of repeating myself again, we really are dependent on the state guidance and which phase we're moving into. And if I can add. So on May 22, the governor had a announcement basically saying that the stay home order for June 1 and with the county's going to phase two. He said that not all counties are going to be moving to phase two on June 1 and made that announcement a couple days ago. So the ones that will not be moving forward are the higher risk counties. And as you know, King and Pierce have been in the higher risk counties this whole time so he's basically saying that some of these counties are going to hold back on June 1 so that's going to prolong us from moving to phase two as well if that's what is decided at that time. And if I would add I would recommend, you know, to have conversations with the academic affairs VP's office and department chairs and what have you about, you know, how the classes are listed because when we sit on information to the campus a while ago about the different options or setups for summer and set up for fall. We had various options they're set up so that if we had to change, we could make a change that would be relatively a little bit smoother than what we had to do before and asking the faculty to completely change all their their teaching and shifting it on online virtual basically overnight. So I would say that that's really a conversation that should happen with the vice president's office within academic affairs and other appropriate people. You know, thing is that we, the information that we have communicated out to the community should have options that are there and and a disclaimer caveat that depending on where we are in the phases that will determine what type of instruction. We will be using moving forward. So, again, I encourage communication with academic affairs on that. Well, we need a doctor's note to be able to work from home. So there's a couple of questions that I'm going to recommend to contact HR directly so that is one of them. And in terms of if there's medical bills that are created due to getting covert work and leave as a result, having to take leave as a result of COVID, I would encourage those individuals with those questions or any individual those questions to contact HR directly. Summer's office will be able to answer that question provide guidance on there. Things will vary person to person situations situation, but you will get appropriate firm guidance from HR. So please, please follow up with them. Air ducts in buildings and carpets. Are they part of the cleaning process for preparation. So, I haven't seen any of the recommendations or best practices discussing cleaning out air ducts or carpets, but they do ask that you know a lot of our buildings the ventilation is directly outside they don't go from classroom to classroom. So that is one thing we will work with facilities on understanding air ducts. They do to talk about leaving doors open leaving windows open would possible and try to keep air flowing through the building. Now, if you look at the CDC website, there's been a new update this last week, which is, they don't believe the spread of coronavirus is happening through high touch surfaces. So they've actually made an update and you've seen it across the news saying that a lot of this touching and fears of touching something, you know, are basically being changed by the CDC. They're now saying that it's through coughing sneezing. And if you're around somebody and talking to them for more than 10 minutes with within six feet. That's why they're in close contact we talk about that 10 minute marker with being six within six feet. So that is the highest risk they say right now. So if that changes and they decide that we need to start steam cleaning carpets or cleaning out ducting we will take whatever guidance they provide or best practices that they provide for returning. I did send Barry Holder a document I think it was about three pages long, and it said how to prepare your business or workstation for return from COVID-19 so I know he's reviewed it and I know he's taking steps towards implementing those best practices as well. So we are getting we're pretty much after three o'clock hour I will have a few more questions and then there's a couple we can follow up with. Even when face to face classes open early ish will students in high risk groups be granted accommodations through access services. So, right now, even with our labs on campus. That's the one thing they stressed in the guidance for those labs is that students are not forced to come back on campus. So that there is ways to still continue their labs continue their course from online education. So I have a feeling that this will be the same when face to face happens as well that they make sure that students are penalized for not returning to campus. And, you know, any student always has an opportunity to go to access services or look at any of the other services on campus that they feel that they can assist them with coming back on campus but I don't think they're going to force students to come back when they're not ready because I think they're always going to put in the guidance to make it available at least for a while until vaccines and everything else come back to make it available online and not analyze students for now returning early. And the last question for this we have a handful of questions that we will answer and get out to the campus. We're not going to be able to answer on this particular town hall but we will answer them and send those out shortly. But the last question is, what are other states in countries doing for classrooms. We have any idea of what other folks are doing. It's been a both sides of the spectrum some states haven't even closed down and that's business as usual in other states, like Washington and California have been very cautious about how they're going to return and, you know, you'll kind of do the same thing where Washington, Oregon, California are kind of doing the same things and, you know, even through the K through 12 they're talking about classes are may not be resuming for fall so, you know, it's really you have to look at what they're doing in our area in our area right now they're just saying it's unknown. There's just not enough information of what's going to be happening at that time. And a lot of it is, you know, what's happening with the vaccine. I know there's a big push on tracing right now that we talked about. And so that's one way they want to try to reduce the spread is through tracing and try to quarantine people. But to look at what every state is doing it's kind of hard right now since we have we're seeing both sides of the spectrum. Quickly add on to that to David and I are part of a council of other peers from the other colleges in our state. So it'll be a really good learning opportunity for us if those counties smaller ones get to move ahead in phases before us and then maybe eventually get to open face to face classes before us at their institutions. We have regular meetings with that council and hopefully they'll be able to share some of their planning efforts, what worked what didn't work, and we'll get a lot of firsthand experience information from that council. If those institutions open up before we do. Well, thank you Francesca. Thank you, David. And thank you all 230 plus people who joined in. We hope that you found this information helpful. We know there's still a lot of unknowns out there. The team and the campus is doing the best we can to try to make sense of all this and put things together. And again the primary focus for our campus is to make sure that we are practicing. We're being safe and it would be an intentional in all of our decision making the questions that were not answered in this town hall. Heather has captured them and we will be answering them and sending those out if you have additional questions that come up later on. And as Francesca said the ask at highland edu is a great place to send those questions and they get routed to the appropriate people. David Francesca and myself are always available to. I'm volunteering those two but they're always available to, to answer questions and again a special thank you to both David and Francesca for great information and their leadership through this very challenging time. Thanks for your time at college. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you so much for being here and we will talk soon. Bye bye.