Penny For Your Thoughts: We Love To Read January 2020 was the first time I heard the words “essential workers.” In early meetings with Emergency Services, I was informed that if we needed to go into a county wide shut down, governmental services that were not considered essential would be closed. By the end of February we were pretty sure that the shutdown was imminent and the word essential became more defined. We don’t often think about the daily business of a county or town, we know that it usually runs smoothly – and when it doesn’t, residents have the ability to help bring about progressive change. But what about during a pandemic! Where was the playbook?