Recently I FOILed to find out how the county was doing in terms of staffing for its contact tracing program. Last fall there were a series of stories in the media reporting that people in Saratoga County testing positive for COVID were not being contacted.
The county sent me a printout of the invoices paid to people the county had contracts with for tracing. I took the period from January 22, 2021 to February 4, 2021 for my analysis.
During that period the county was contracting with thirty-eight people whose hours varied from just a few to over seventy.
According to our population, the state standard would have the county at fify full time staff.
While the staffing is well below the state recommendation that did not necessarily mean that the county was currently, actually understaffed.
I spoke to a reliable source who is a contact tracer. I was told that prior to January, the tracing operation was basically non-functional. In January the old guard was voted out and new leadership took over the Board of Supervisors. This person told me that the new leadership brought in a serious focus on fixing things. This person told me that now things are being well run and this person felt that they finally have an effective team.
It’s encouraging.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
John, have we just developed extremely low expectations for the county or what? I mean, terrific, so it only took them what, 7-8 months and about 100 dead residents before they figured out contact tracing? The ‘new leadership’ were all in office in 2020 as well, I am not giving them a win for getting it together at this stage of the game. Good grief.
LikeLike