Riverside County will identify its own after-hours reopening program; still not fast enough for a county manager and his constituents.
The county oversight board on Tuesday approved the draft plan of Supervisor Jeff Hewitt for Riverside-specific guidelines, but will wait two weeks to implement it immediately.
The 3-2 vote came hours after California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly announced that Riverside would move from the state’s maximum restriction from purple to red.
The most flexible restrictions mean that some householders can resume with reduced capacity, adding restaurants, gyms, beauty salons and hairdressers, retailers, grocery stores, tattoo parlors, places of worship, nail salons, museums, cinemas and libraries.
“We need to be slow and strict to be more prepared in case we see an increase in transmission, it wouldn’t force us to take a giant step back,” Ghaly said in a virtual briefing. the county had counted 57,482 positive cases and 1,172 deaths.
Hewitt’s two-page proposal called for the early reopening of many services in person, but did not take into account the riverside crossing on Tuesday at the red level. His fellow supervisors advised that the plan be postponed until the board assembly on October 6. , after a functioning organization and county staff in financial recovery were able to review it and precisely what businesses they could reopen. Meanwhile, red state restrictions for Riverside County remain.
“I’d love to reopen everything tomorrow. I’d love to do that,” Hewitt said. “We’ve turned red, everything’s fine. But I’ve already noticed this movie and we’re still a long way off. “
According to Hewitt’s original proposal, the county would reopen completely until November 3, and some industries would open immediately, followed by a momentary phase on October 13 for wedding receptions, organizational meetings, and events. cinemas and bars Some of those industries, such as gyms and cinemas, are now allowed below the red level.
Fraying on its own trail could charge Riverside County between $28 million and $656 million in public investment, county general manager George Johnson warned. Gavin Newsom has threatened to cut investment for counties that do not comply with COVID-19 state rules for reopening. Hewitt mocked the warning, saying Riverside “would lose a lot of profit in an economy that is crushed. “
The chairman of the board, V. Manuel Pérez, who voted against the measure, said to “stay on course” and highlighted the good luck of Orange County, Riverside’s neighbor to the west, which has recently gone from purple to red. and is fast on the way to the orange dot with even fewer limitations.
The vote came after an assembly that lasted several hours in which a passionate, and infrequently rebellious, crowd of dozens of citizens begged supervisors to re-open Riverside. Some other people screamed through the microphone. Others brought homemade symptoms that said “churches are essential” and “let’s open our schools. “Some yelled at the supervisors. One woman waved an American flag and everyone expressed depression over the continued closures in the county.
“It’s heartbreaking, because as a mom, I can’t [my children] have replaced their lives,” said a mother of two children with special needs. “This remote learning thing is very stressful for them. It’s stressful for parents. It’s ridiculous that we go to school with Zoom. Please, as a mom, I beg you. “
The growing applause led Perez to ask the audience to shake his hands to make noise. Some grunted aloud in response, and a user shouted, “You paint for us!”Perez then asked for a break, which lasted an hour before the board resumed. talk about Hewitt’s proposal.
Kira Boranian told supervisors that when her Corona Lather Studio closed in March, she cried every day, wondering how to pay her bills. Just two years after putting “each and every penny of each and every one [pull]” into the structure of his living room, Boranian said it was “ruined. “So he reopened Lather Studio three weeks later, as opposed to state orders. She had considered the livelihood of her stylists to be “essential,” she said.
“My living room is cleaner than a target. Everything’s disinfected. A comb is not used on a visitor until it is cleaned again,” Boranian said. “He ruined small businesses . . . There is no explanation for why this pandemic is over with our lives. “
Warnie Enochs, a former Murrieta councillor, said her children had to “practically” close their business because of the pandemic. “The poor little businessman is going wrong. He can’t do it,” Enochs said. I can’t let them last that long. I can’t let him do it that long. It’s completely ridiculous. “
In one note, Hewitt praised Riverside’s welcome in January to diplomats in Wuhan, China, of the first recorded coronavirus outbreak. Riverside has taken “bold and swift action” from the start, Hewitt wrote, but key facets of the economy remain closed. the state of moving positions of purpose just as Riverside County had met reopening standards.
“The lack of transparent state direction has left thousands of people with doubts about their ability to pay their expenses and their families,” Hewitt wrote. when our economy is closed. We will feel the burden of these economic effects over the next few years. It’s time for Riverside County to take care of our own well-being.
Hewitt’s proposal came less than two years after his election to the supervisory board, marking the third time in the country that a libertarian wins a district representing more than 50,000 people. In an interview with The Times last year, Hewitt said he proposes “true conservative values: a smaller government and not interventionism. “