Friday’s Roundtable discussion hosted by Park City Municipal Government focused on the pressing issues business owners face as Summit County Public Health officials prepare to ease COVID Stay-at-Home orders.
In late March, Utah Governor Gary Herbert published the Utah Leads Together Plan, an economic response to COVID-19. As the number of new COVID cases flattens, officials across the state introduced the second phase of the plan which includes new guidelines that define the stabilization period.
Summit County Public Health Director Rich Bullough says there are more than 20 business sectors that are working with county officials to define how each would operate under the new order. The plan says gatherings will be limited to no more than 20 people and that social distancing protocols stay the same. Food services and restaurants will also be required to comply with the 20-person limits. Bullough says, under the new orders, the 20- person limit will cross every business segment and includes patrons and staff in the count.
“The governors’ 2.0 plan is very specific to that. If you're doing a daycare for example, it's the kids and the staff and it's very specific to that. We anticipate guidelines for food service being released with our order.”
Large events that draw more than 20 to 50 people will not occur in Park City during the stabilization phase. County Manager Tom Fisher says they’ll look to the organizers to hear their suggestions.
“I don’t have the creativity yet to imagine that a Kimball Arts festival the way we've always done it, can be done under those guidelines. But maybe there is somebody out there that can help us with that and so we look for that creativity. But I will come out and say it and be the bad guy and say that I don't think gatherings like that, the way we've always done them are going to be done this summer."
Bullough says the county does not want large numbers of visitors during this time period. Current testing of COVID-19 cases is now around 3% compared to as high as 30% in the early period of the epidemic in March.
“I’ll just be really blunt. Visitation is what caused our initial big spike. All our first cases were visitor related. We also had the first community spread case here. Those initial high numbers are related to visitation. It's going to be a balancing act for the businesses to be economically viable many of them, it's going to be beneficial to have visitors. At the same time, we want to be smart about this.”
Bullough has other concerns with the workforce and how to balance inviting people to the county while maintaining safe practices.
“Also, much of the workforce doesn't live here. They’re going to be traveling from surrounding counties. There are counties around us that have surging numbers right now. So that is absolutely a concern and that's part of the intent of the standards that we hope to put in place related to specific business segments, is how to do the screenings, how to educate, etc."
Fisher says businesses and officials will have to have a conversation about how Summit County uses marketing dollars.
“We’ve got a lot of public dollars and a huge amount of private dollars that go into marketing our community either locally or outside of our state, and then internationally. And I think we have to be very strategic in that, in the context of trying to protect our community so we can still operate during our highest season.”
Council Member Max Doilney encouraged everyone to read the Governor’s plan, so the entire community understands what’s going on.
“It’s going to be a long process. But again it comes back to that community effort and us all working together to try and bring each industry back in time. So, these practices are going to be tested here in June and then we'll have to see what happens after that I believe.”
A link to the Governor’s Economic Response plan can be foundhere. The new Summit County health order is expected to be released to the public by the end of April.
