Canyon County officials refused to say why they closed DMV for a week. What we now know
The news release was a surprise. The Canyon County Vehicle Title and Registration Office would be closed for a week, from Nov. 8 through 12, it said.
The explanation, however, was vague. “Due to unexpected circumstances,” the office would be closed.
Was it a COVID-19 outbreak? If so, had the workers been working in close proximity to one another and the public? Were they all vaccinated? Were they wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart from others?
When the Idaho Statesman asked for details at the time, Joe Decker, Canyon County’s spokesman, who had issued the news release, did not respond.
The news release followed a release two days earlier that said the office would have “limited staff availability” on Friday, Nov. 5. It asked people to forgo any nonessential visits.
So the Statesman asked for internal emails from Brian Stender, the Canyon County Assessor; Joe Cox, the deputy assessor; and Kimbra Asqueta, motor vehicles supervisor. The Assessor’s Office runs the title and registration office. The emails arrived this week in response to the newspaper’s public records request.
Those emails did not solve the mystery. But they do offer clues.
On Friday, Nov. 5, Kimbra emailed Stender and others to say 10 employees were out of the office and three more “are feeling ackey (sic) and have headaches.”
Kimbra then sent an email to the DMV staff informing them that the office would be closed for a week.
“We are hoping that this will allow all of us to take some time to ensure that we are all healthy,” Kimbra’s email said. “We cannot dictate what you do on your own time, but we would hope that you use this time to focus on your health and practice good social distancing.”
Later that day, Decker sent the news release announcing the office closure for a week.
It is clear that Decker, Stender, Cox and Greg Himes, chief appraisal supervisor for Canyon County, discussed their public response to the closure. In an email Nov. 8, Decker proposed an “unresponsive response” to a Statesman follow-up question about what led to the closure. The Statesman never got even that response.
“Happy to come to have another round table, but I don’t think there is any dancing around this one without saying what led to the decision to close,” Decker wrote. “And that didn’t really have much traction in our meeting.”
Businesses and local government agencies are not required to report COVID-19 outbreaks in their offices, said Niki Forbing-Orr, spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in an email.
It is clear Canyon County officials had to close the office because of employee sicknesses and sanitize it.
Rick Britton, interim facilities director for Canyon County, and Christine Wendelsdorf, the county’s emergency management coordinator, met with Stender on Monday, Nov. 8, to “discuss what the plan is for tonight at the DMV building.”.
Wendelsdorf also responded to an event on Nov. 8 called “DMV disinfecting.”
Stender sent an email asking for advice about turning off motor vehicle employees’ key cards. Himes suggested the county turn them off to “keep them out while maintenance does their thing and sanitizes.”
But the motor vehicle office ended up not being closed for the whole week, because the Idaho Transportation Department sent help. The department assisted the county with existing appointments related to vehicle registrations and titles, said Tucker Craigm spokesperson for ITD.
“We were able to send two employees to cover nearly 100 appointments, several walk-ins, and additionally, staff at ITD handled over- the-phone transactions for those that could not be served in person,” he said.
When Canyon County announced that it would open on Wednesday, Nov. 10, instead of remaining closed the rest of the week, Stender said in the release, “The number of public-facing employees who were necessarily out on authorized sick leave last week made it functionally impossible for us to provide the specialized service necessary to process vehicle registrations. I learned earlier today that several of those employees have now been cleared to return to work, allowing us to open back up tomorrow.”
On Wednesday, the day after the Statesman received the emails, the newspaper emailed Decker to ask if the Assessor’s Office had anything to add, including about sanitation efforts and possible negative tests.
He said the office is sanitized and cleaned nightly, a practice that has been going on for several months. The Assessor’s Office declined to comment further.
