136: Lucine Sihelnik

City Council Woman

Lucine tells us that the city government would not and did not shut down. Being a part of it, she worked through the entire pandemic. Her role as a public servant is to spend time out in the community meeting with people, getting public perspectives to help in making legislative and financial decisions for the City of Reading.

During the pandemic, being out among the people was unheard of. Yet she continued to stay in touch in several ways. The two main ways were: digitally through virtual meetings and live streamed television shows on BCTV. These allowed her to get immediate feedback on how people were doing in the communities from they themselves as well as police departments, civil servants and frontline workers. “The main thing was to stay in contact with the people. Keep everyone connected.”

During all this her mother-in-law passed away. That was particularly hard because no one could be with her because of COVID. “It was difficult being isolated from her,” she told us. “We couldn’t even gather to honor her after she passed,” all because of the virus. 

Lucine said, “I can’t even begin to count the number of people I know that had COVID.” This pandemic, “has brought out the best and worst of humanity.” She continued, “I am an eternal optimist…and I believe in the good of the people.” 

Moving forward Lucine would like to see peace, city unity, bipartisanship, neighbors being good to one and other and people meeting each other on a basic human level.