By Conrad Dudderar
Senior Staff Writer
A Yukon COVID-19 Task Force Team has been established for the public’s health and safety and the city’s economic welfare.
Task force members will meet weekly – or as needed – and develop recommendations they will present to the Yukon City Council. Their first meeting is 8 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 2.
“With COVID-19 and flu added together, we needed to make a concerted effort to be as well-educated and informed as we can,” Yukon Mayor Shelli Selby said. “And to receive information from all areas so we can make good decisions here in Yukon.”
While the number of positive COVID-19 cases have leveled off in Canadian County, Yukon’s mayor doesn’t believe citizens and city leaders should let their guard down.
“This committee will look at medical research from documented, published articles, and then also look at our community,” Selby said. “That’s why I have Maggie Jackson with the health department and Teresa Gray of INTEGRIS involved, and then Don Blose of Spanish Cove because of his background in public health.”
Among those serving on the Yukon COVID-19 Task Force Team are:
• Yukon City Manager Jim Crosby
• Assistant City Manager Tammy Kretchmar
• Yukon Police Chief John Corn
• Yukon Fire Chief Shawn Vogt
• INTEGRIS Canadian Valley Hospital President Teresa Gray
• Canadian County Health Department community liaison Maggie Jackson
• Spanish Cove Retirement Village CEO Don Blose (Oklahoma’s past state immunization director.)
• Yukon Chamber of Commerce CEO Pam Shelton.
Mayor Selby said she doesn’t “have all the answers” and that’s why she invited these local officials and health professionals to serve on the Yukon COVID Task Force Team.
“We’ll discuss, probably argue, but at the end, come together for our community,” she said.
Yukon City Council members also were invited to appoint residents of their wards to the task force.
“With all of us together, we can decide what is best for Yukon,” Selby said.
Meetings will be conducted through the Zoom videoconferencing app.
“This first meeting is going to be long because we’re going to be looking at what our numbers look like, what the hospital situation is and whether we have enough personal protective equipment and what else we need in place,” Yukon’s mayor said.
In a letter to task force members, Selby wrote the group is “not a place to promote your own agenda on mask or no mask.
This is not a place to share the latest Facebook physician’s thought. This is not a place to share articles that are not science based from published, reliable sources.
“This is a place to come together and, through education and putting together the minds of some of Yukon’s finest, do what is best for our community. Our sole goal here is to make recommendations that keep our citizens and businesses safe.”
