August 26 2020 Update

Happy Wednesday!  As you may have read or heard, the Municipal Council passed an ordinance last night establishing a requirement that people in Provo wear a face mask in most public settings.  After almost four hours of discussion and a variety of amendments, the ordinance passed unanimously.  After the vote, the Mayor explained her objections to the ordinance and indicated that she planned to veto it.  As more information becomes available about the formal veto message and the Council's plan to consider overriding the veto, we will keep you posted.  Tomorrow I will share a link to the Mayor's blog where we share some of her thinking about it.

CORONAVIRUS STATS

Nationally, the CDC reports 5,752,653 cases with 177,759 fatalities.

Utah:  50,174 cases (up 407 from yesterday); 2,996 hospitalizations; 401 deaths (up 4 from yesterday)

Utah County:  10,435 cases (up 119 from yesterday); 489 hospitalizations; 46 deaths (up 1 from yesterday)

NEWS YOU CAN USE

• Provo's City Council has unanimously passed a mask mandate for our city. Mayor Kaufusi has expressed her intent to veto this law, after which it will return to the Council for a potential override.
•  620,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders in Louisiana and Texas in anticipation for Hurricane Laura, a category 4 storm that is predicted to arrive tonight.
• A large house fire this morning left 2200 residents without power for a few hours this morning when it burned a utility pole and the power lines hit the ground. Power was restored as of 11:00am.

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

THE MAYOR'S DAY

Today, Mayor Kaufusi is out of town on a much needed short break! But here is what I had going on:

• Held a workflow discussion with Customer Service
• Met with the City Ombudsman
• Held a meeting with the Director of Development Services
• Participated in a meeting on City Safety
• Met about the Provo Airport
• Interviewed with various media outlets

FUN STUFF

I first became aware of actor Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride (which is likely my favorite movie of all time!).  Since then he has been in Chicago Hope and other TV shows and movies.   I thought you might enjoy this little video of Mandy Patinkin and his wife's famous fruit salad song.

Have a great rest of the day, and we'll connect again tomorrow!

Wayne