BOISE, Idaho — After being sworn into office, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean soon hit a mountain of unexpected challenges created by a global pandemic. One year ago on Thursday, Mayor McLean was among the first leaders in Idaho to make notable moves in response to COVID-19.
“It’s been a long year for all of us. It’s been a year filled with sacrifice with, I’d say, hope and optimism because I’ve seen our community come together to protect each other,” Mayor McLean said. “We just passed that one-year anniversary of the first case and this week is the one-year anniversary of the legislation at the city level that allowed us to pass health emergency ordinances and then the announcements we made in Boise City to protect our residents.”
Looking back on those decisions, not many really knew what the community was in for but McLean said she and her team knew they had to act.
“They were tough decisions to make but I’ll say that we made them with confidence and certainty because we were learning from what other cities had already experienced and some of the missteps that they made. Looking at the science and recognizing that while we didn’t know much about the virus there were steps, we could take to protect people,” she explained.
Like other city leaders across the country, Mayor McLean was targeted with very loud criticism of her actions. McLean’s home eventually became a spot for nightly protests with the message that her orders and restrictions went too far. These protests paralleled a time where Boise and Ada counties saw rising case counts and deaths.
“That was tough, and I guess I’d say through this experience we all learned we can’t know everything. That we have to make decisions and trust what the experts know but at the same time, trust what we are hearing from people and then move through these tough moments with a bit of comfort with the uncomfortable," she said. "We needed to make decisions, we needed to support our residents who were losing loved ones. We needed to honor that in a way that was difficult because we couldn’t come together."
McLean said the priorities for 2020 certainly changed as the world was impacted by the pandemic. Still, she said her team in the city remain focused on the platforms she ran on.
“You know, I just came out of a meeting with our senior leadership team with the City of Boise and I want the community to know that while we addressed COVID, we learned from it, we worked in different ways. Protected people and delivered new services, at the same time we remained focused on the challenges that this community made clear that we needed to address; affordable housing, building out a transportation as traffic and congestion returns and as we grow, building an economy through climate innovation and transition to clean energy. We worked on all of those things at the same as we had to address the urgent needs of the moment related to COVID,” McLean said.
Hope and optimism are two words many held onto through the last year. McLean added that those things were so important to her and despite tough times she says she was encouraged by the people of Boise, people she is incredibly grateful to have been trusted by.
“I learned but was also reminded once again how committed Boiseans are to each other and when we call on each other to make sacrifices we will do it and we saw that time and time again. This desire of Boiseans to help each other, to step up for their community and to help us protect this community and ensure that we recover in stronger ways,” she said.
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