Weekly Report – February 20, 2021

Vaccine shipments delayed due to severe winter weather across the U.S (from King County).  In King County, this delay will impact most vaccination appointments scheduled for Friday, February 19, and likely into the weekend.  Vaccine providers will reach out to reschedule appointments.  If your second dose appointment is cancelled, make sure to reschedule with the same provider as your first dose appointment.  Most vaccine supply expected this week was scheduled to fulfill second dose appointments.  You should get the second dose as close to the recommended 21-28 day timeframe as possible, but you can still receive a second dose of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines up to 6 weeks (42 days) after the first dose.  Kent and Auburn Community Vaccination sites: Due to the national delay in vaccine shipments, appointments scheduled for Friday, 2/19 at 4pm and later will be rescheduled.  Affected patients will receive a call in the next three days to reschedule appointments.  King County will update its website by Friday afternoon with information about appointments scheduled for this weekend.  King County COVID-19 Vaccine Updates

Library usage changing.  Not too surprisingly, the King County Library System reports that 2020 proved to be a record-breaking year for online library use.  KCLS patrons checked out 7,408,428 digital titles in 2020—up 30.5% from last year, making KCLS the No. 2 digital circulating library in the United States and No. 3 in the world.  KCLS’ per capita digital usage remains the highest in the U.S. based on data from Rakuten OverDrive, a digital reading platform used by libraries nation-wide.  This digital trend seems to be true for business, nonprofit activity and government generally.  We’re probably never quite going back to the way things were.

LIDAR elevation funding secured from USGS (United States Geological Survey).  Normandy Park contributed $1000 toward total grant match for a USGS LIDAR elevation mapping and data collection program grant application.  High quality elevation data is inconsistent across King County jurisdictions and LIDAR (light and radar, technically “light detection and ranging”) makes it accessible, and highly accurate.  Ever since the Oso landslide in Snohomish County, where LIDAR was not available, King County has progressively acquired LIDAR data that augments both the safety and accuracy of mapping and engineering assessment.  LIDAR is used to make high-resolution maps for use in surveying, geodesy, geomatics, archeology, geography, geology, geomorphology, seismology, forestry, atmospheric physics, laser guidance, airborne laser swath mapping, and laser altimetry.  Suffice it to say, it’s useful.  The primary funding partners on the application were King County, the US Forest Service, City of Seattle, and WA DNR.  Sixteen other cities and seven utilities in King County also contributed funds.  In total, the grant application partners offered about $742,000 towards the total project cost of $1,092,000.  King County was asking for $350,000 from USGS.  WA DNR served as the grant applicant.  The grant was awarded just prior to the end of 2020 by USGS.  Normandy Park’s city code indicates that our jurisdiction relies on Sewer Maps from 1963 in some areas.  In fact, we use more accurate King County data, but this new information will be a great improvement.  We are in the process of updating the code in this area.  (Normandy Park’s estimated fair share was actually more than double the amount dedicated to the grant.)

“severe weather delays vaccine shipments”