Preston County Commissioners informed of COVID-related yard sale guidelines

KINGWOOD — Yard sales are allowed but discouraged, Preston County Commissioners were told Tuesday.

Preston Health Department Director V.J. Davis answered the yard sale question, which Commission President Samantha Stone said she received.

Davis updates commissioners weekly on COVID-19. Preston County has had 15 confirmed cases of the virus. Davis said the governor recently gave guidance on auctions, flea markets and yard sales.

“Basically as long as you don’t have more than 25 people congregating, people practicing the social distancing, encourage the face masks,” Davis said, yard sales are allowed. “The only precaution that I would be telling people with personal yard sales is they may want to check with their homeowners’ insurance.”

That would be to ensure they were covered by the insurance if someone said they caught COVID-19 at a yard sale.

“We are definitely encouraging people not to have yard sales. This is just something they don’t really need to do right now, but we understand that some people are going to. If they are going to do it, do it as safely as possible,” Davis said.

Stay home if you are sick, maintain social distancing and wear masks while shopping and anytime social distancing cannot be maintained, Davis said.

County Administrator Kathy Mace said the reopening of county buildings Monday went smoothly. “I can only commend the public,” she said.

Masks are required to enter county buildings, visitors’ temperatures will be taken and a series of health questions asked when they enter the building.

The meeting started an hour past the time posted on agendas last week. Stone said the 9 a.m. start time listed was “a clerical error.” The commission had agreed to meet later Tuesday because Commissioner Don Smith had an 8 a.m. meeting with the convention and visitors bureau, where he represents the commission.

The live stream of the meeting had two video interruptions. Stone said one was because Commissioner Dave Price’s county tablet was used for the broadcast and it had an alert programmed in.

County Network Specialist William Armtrong said he will look into why the Wi-Fi dropped the video stream on the second interruption. The county has bought a laptop computer and has a video camera on back order to do the streaming, Armstrong said. He estimated those will cost about $1,200 total.

In other actions, the commission:

-reappointed Vicki Jenkins to the Preston County Building Commission for a three-year term and Rosemary Houser to the County Board of Health for another five years.

-went into closed session with Assessor Connie Ervin on a personnel matter. No action was taken afterwards.

-agreed to add the Preston County Dive Team to the IamResponding app, at a cost of about $325 a year. The app alerts volunteers of calls and allows them to respond immediately with whether they can answer the call and estimated time of response.

TWEET @DominionPostWV