Yates appoints Flanagan as public health director

YATES COUNTY--At the March 8 meeting of the Yates County Legislature, Annmarie Flanagan was unanimously appointed as the next director of public health for Yates and Schuyler County.
Flanagan's appointment comes after the former director, Deb Minor, retired. Minor served in the Yates County Department of Public Health for 31 years, the last 12 years as the director and in her last two years as the director for both Yates and Schuyler County.
Flanagan is a Yates County native and brings over 30 years of health care experience with her. Flanagan started her career as a registered nurse, and then later obtained a master's degree in nursing education, a post-master's degree as a family nurse practitioner, and her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from St. John Fisher College.
"I am honored to be appointed for the director of public health role and I am eager to work with the outstanding staff in both counties," Flanagan said in a written statement. "My main focus is to vaccinate as many Schuyler and Yates County residents as possible, to be able to reach herd immunity, and for all of us to return to our daily lives without restrictions. I look forward to moving past this pandemic so both departments can return to our full focus of health prevention and promotion."
During the meeting, Flanagan explained 21.5 percent of all residents in Yates County have completed at least one vaccination dose and the newly approved Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine has already started to be delivered.
"We do have two cases or 200 doses of (Johnson and Johnson vaccine), which is a one-dose vaccine, which we will be setting up a clinic for later this week," said Flanagan.
After an executive session at the meeting, a resolution was passed to lease the former Gordmans Building in the Lake Street Plaza to hold COVID-19 vaccination clinics. The cost is $5,000 a month and will be 100 percent funded by the COVID-19 Response Grant. The lease runs from March 15 to July 31, 2021, with the option of extending if needed.
According to county officials, the recently approved $1.9 trillion federal COVID relief package contains roughly $4.8 million that will be made available for Yates County. Nonie Flynn, county administrator for Yates County, said as far as she understands, the only thing Yates has to do to claim the $4.8 million is to demonstrate to the relevant authorities there is a material need for it. Flynn added that would not be difficult to demonstrate.
Lisa Minns, operations manager for the Yates County Transit Service, gave a briefing on public transportation in the county for 2020. While the number of passengers, routes and money taken in were down drastically in 2020 compared to 2019 due to the COVID pandemic, Minns told legislators that routes are reopening and business is starting to pick back up again. Minns added that as routes have started to reopen passengers have been very respectful of the new COVID-related rules.