Part Two: Council expresses frustration with governor on continued COVID-19 closings

That the closing of the Front Royal Visitors Center crossed paths with the State COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic response somewhat blurred public discontent with what had been criticized as a mandated change to the Town’s Tourism function without an immediate plan to implement that change as spring, and normally tourist season, approached.

Perhaps fittingly following Interim Town Manager Matt Tederick and some councilmen’s occasional sparring with the Visitors Center’s Meghan Campbell Monday night over the effectiveness of Visitors Center staff’s past work in online marketing, council’s attention refocused on the COVID-19 pandemic and state-mandated emergency responses of Democratic Governor Ralph Northam.

Empty downtown Main St. American streets are painful for many – but are things moving too slowly toward a viable and safe recovery for some less impacted regions and communities? Royal Examiner Photo/Mike McCool

For the Front Royal Town Council majority it was a perhaps natural segue from the “painful and disheartening experience” they were told they were a party to imposing on the Visitors Center staff, to that imposed by Governor Ralph Northam on small businesses, their employees and a stir-crazy customer base in Front Royal, and across the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“As everybody’s aware, there’s a lot of people in our town that are hurting right now, especially our small business people. And you know, the one size fits all approach to Fairfax and Richmond and a lot of our big metropolitan areas, shouldn’t really be pushed on the Valley and things of that nature,” Gary Gillespie began, noting he had not prepared remarks on the statewide COVID-19 pandemic response but felt they needed council’s attention.

Gillespie said he had emailed Town Attorney Doug Napier earlier, “As far as what we can do, if anything we can do to help our business people open up. Because let’s face it, we can sit here and talk about putting bills off and payments off and things of that sort, but the only thing that’s going to help is for these people to reopen.

“And I just want for us as a council to have this discussion; because I know a lot of people right now are going to be mad at me, you know, I’m probably going to get some death threats after this one. But hey, you know, there are other people out there that are seriously in trouble right now. And we need to realize that. And I think all of us do,” Gillespie said, pointing to a brewing Resolution proposal he credited fellow councilman Jacob Meza with.

Let’s talk about different phased-in recoveries for differently impacted folks, Gov. Northam. Royal Examiner Photos/Roger Bianchini

“I thought that was a fabulous idea. I don’t know how far it will go, but at some point, somebody’s going to have to take a look at this. And I know Mr. Napier’s answer to be is when you’re under a government’s order, or a governor’s order that there’s nothing we can do out of fear of liability,” Gillespie offered, adding, “… I think some of the businesses as far as the separation – we’ve got to give them a chance. And we need to seriously soon start this discussion.”

Meza noted his agreement with Gillespie’s assessment before expressing dissatisfaction with the latest announcement from the governor that a phased-in reopening would be targeted from a most-recently stated June 15 date, to a May 15 start.

“I just want to say I agree with Councilman Gillespie, and even the new update of the May 15th phased approach is going to restrict restaurants to only 25% of occupancy,” Meza observed of continued social distancing restrictions in public places, “and then go on for months in reassessments. So, May 15 isn’t the end, it’s part of a phased approach.”

Meza continued the theme of a localized approach to pandemic restrictions, rather than statewide, based on community COVID-19 statistics despite the ongoing severe limitations on available testing and troubling numbers to our east.

It might be noted that the European experience with COVID-19 has illustrated the advisability of community-wide testing of virtually all citizens to effectively isolate even asymptomatic 2019 Coronavirus contamination and allow normal social and business interactions to safely resume. But as elsewhere, testing availability has been a problem from the outset of the 2019 strain of Coronavirus’s arrival in the U.S. in late January.

Pointing to only four hospitalizations in Warren County “with zero deaths” out of the 68 confirmed cases here, Meza suggested the Town, and the County government if willing to join, add a Second Amendment impetus to what some see as a First Amendment issue on government-mandated restrictions to citizens’ freedom of movement and choice.

Warren County counts 68 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday morning, May 5, with only four hospitalizations.

“I think as elected officials we should start putting our heads together on the right approach. One more thing, I think Councilman Gillespie made a really good point about, you know, in the Resolution stating that we’d like to be able to reopen and remove some of the restrictions on our businesses. Just keep in mind that we quickly did that when it came to our Second Amendment rights. And I think there are still some questions out there as to the Constitutionality of the outreach of the executive order,” Meza said of the governor’s mandated restrictions on public gatherings and movement, even in a declared statewide health emergency.

“Just as the Second Amendment rights were challenged in a Resolution, I think we should pick that up, evaluate it and look at doing a Resolution to send to Richmond,” Meza urged his colleagues.

Council’s one non-partisan, non-county Republican Committee member Letasha Thompson quickly voiced her support, making it an apparently unanimous council consensus that Front Royal, and possibly Warren County as a whole, as with the Second Amendment Sanctuary Community designation opposing Democratic-proposed gun control legislation, move toward defiance of, in this case, the Democratic governor’s COVID-19 Emergency Management restrictions on business operations and public movement.

“Yea, I agree with that as well. And … I just think we’re not saying that we’re going to sacrifice people’s lives because it’s just not that widespread here right now, there’s one fatality,” Thompson appeared to note of the till recently standing total for the six-jurisdiction Lord Fairfax Health District.

A check of the Virginia Health Department website on May 5th indicated the LFHD fatality total up to 9, with 5 of those in Page County, 3 in Shenandoah County, and 1 in Frederick County, of a total of 545 confirmed LFHD cases and 44 total hospitalizations.

As to statewide testing, the total on May 5 stood at 127,938 of Virginia’s 8.7 million population.

This May 5th COVID-19 impact map of Virginia shows disturbing clusters to our east in Northern Virginia’s Metro D.C. area. We now ponder risk vs. reward options in the future.

Of the COVID-19 state totals, to our east lie six potential tourist source or commuter destinations totaling 15,541 cases, 1,068 deaths and 1,319 hospitalizations, in Fauquier County (147 cases, 3 deaths, 11 hospitalizations), Prince William County (2,223, 33, 225), Fairfax County (4,834, 24, 100), Arlington County (1,169, 49, 196), Loudoun County (998, 24, 100), and Washington, D.C. (5,170 cases, 258 deaths, no hospitalization statistic) to the D.C. Metro Area total.

Are we about to roll the dice?

Well, as its commitment to New Market Tax Credit financing of the FRPD construction project against the advice of its own administrative and finance staff and the NMTC program administrator illustrated, this is a council majority that likes to gamble.

Part 1: Visitors Center staff expresses frustration with council direction on Tourism