| Campaign News
Very glad to see our Mayor taking action to fight the spread of this disease. It’s bound to displease a very vocal minority in this City, which makes this decision not only the right thing to do, but courageous as well.After listening to feedback from our residents, our Cedar Park Chamber of Commerce, and several key business owners in one-on-one calls, later today I’m issuing an order that directs our Cedar Park businesses and non-profits to require face coverings indoors for both employees and visitors. It will become effective this Wednesday. You will see similar directives issued shortly by Georgetown, Taylor, Round Rock, Hutto, and Leander in an effort to slow down the COVID spread, save our ICU bed capacity, and protect businesses from a second wave of shutdowns that could bankrupt them.
First, this will protect our Cedar Park residents. Our Wilco ICU bed usage is at 88% and expected to fill soon if big changes don’t happen right now. Cedar Park has only four ICU beds currently available. One of us, or someone we care about, may need an ICU bed this summer. We must do everything we can to make sure that bed will be there. Since I’ve been on the city council, I don’t remember receiving more emails/phone calls about any issue than I have in the last 10 days on the issue of face coverings. The ratio from residents has been 9-to-1 in favor of businesses requiring face coverings.
Second, this will protect our businesses and our economy—particularly our small businesses. The businesses themselves have universally told me they are highly supportive of having such a directive in place. When a customer infects one of their employees, sometimes the entire business has to temporarily shut down. Also, businesses should not have to deal with unequal playing fields with their competitors when making mask policies, while they’re fighting to survive. That playing field should be level. Further, not requiring face coverings will expose our businesses to tremendous liability exposure from post-COVID litigation. While our large corporate and multi-national businesses can maybe survive a second statewide shutdown, our smaller businesses simply can’t—many would be bankrupted by that. We can’t let that happen.
***The main reason to wear face coverings is not to protect ourselves, it’s to protect OTHERS from our spreading COVID should we have it but not realize it.*** We must slow down the spread by keeping six feet distance from others and, when we can’t, by wearing face coverings. Lots of uncertainty remains about this virus. If we’re wrong about face coverings, then it’s a small inconvenience. But if we’re right about them, we’re saving lives and we’re saving our economy.
I know these are tough times. We’ve all been highly affected. It’s been hard. This isn’t a time for politics or selfishness. Our main priority right now is to make choices that help our neighbors. It’s one of the things that makes us Cedar Park. So let’s keep being there for each other. We will get through this together.—CORBIN
An agenda item for tonight's meeting of the Cedar Park City Council is to consider taking additional measures against the coronavirus. I strongly believe that the city should follow the recommendations of the Texas Restaurant Association and many other pro-business organizations to mandate wearing of fask masks and social distancing measures in our businesses. As cases and hospitalizations have increased dramatically in Williamson and Travis counties in recent days, it is clear that strong measures need to be taken if we are to get this virus back under control. I'm as eager as anybody for life to get back to normal, which is why the city should take the most decisive actions that the Governor will currently allow. After all, the sooner we get our community united in fighting this virus, the sooner we'll be able to get back to normalcy, and more importantly, the more of our neighbors' lives we'll save along the way.
Having once been in the position where I might have to pull a trigger on another human being, I learned that judgment is absolutely indispensable in a potential life-or-death situation. As a leader, you inspire good judgment in your team by setting the right tone. Which is why I really appreciate the tone that our interim police chief, Mike Harmon, continues to set for the Cedar Park Police Department, and represents his profession well: www.hillcountrynews.com/stories/local-police-chiefs-sheriff-and-mayors-react-to-george-floyds-dea...
Local police chiefs, Sheriff and mayors react to George Floyd's death
www.hillcountrynews.com
"Over the weekend, I found myself thinking continually about George Floyd and the circumstances surrounding his death...The failed actions by officers who were sworn to protect and serve were a complete failure to our police profession. “Protect and Serve” are not just words!" said &n...Good article on the difficult decisions faced by our mayor during this crisis. In the Army, we refer to this as the “burden of command”. Never easy to be a leader, but our city has been fortunate to be led by Corbin Van Arsdale during a time where we had no roadmap, just priorities. hillcountrynews.com/stories/cedar-park-leander-mayors-talk-challenges-lessons-learned-from-corona...
Cedar Park, Leander mayors talk challenges, lessons learned from coronavirus crisis
hillcountrynews.com
The coronavirus pandemic created unprecedented challenges for city governments throughout the country and locally posed a test of leadership for Cedar Park Mayor Corbin Van Arsdale and Leander Mayor ...Well folks, we've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that the Cedar Park city election scheduled for May 2nd has been postponed until the November 3rd general election. I believe this was absolutely the right decision for keeping our citizens as safe as possible, and I note that the council approved this unanimously. Still, kind of a bummer, as I was eager to jump into Get-Out-The-Vote mode here in the next few weeks. The GOOD NEWS, however, is that we now have another 7 months to get out there, engage fellow residents and educate them about the importance of city government! So please stay tuned for more opportunities to get engaged coming soon!