Roseville Pressures County Leaders To Develop A Reopening Plan
ROSEVILLE (CBS13) — The appetite to reopen businesses is growing.
People in Roseville are putting pressure on city leaders to come up with a plan to get places up and running with the blessing of health officials.
City leaders have acted fast and said this is their way of getting ahead. They're working with businesses of all shapes and sizes to figure out a way they can reopen safely.
"It's going to be a whole new world as the economy reopens and that's what we want to start planning for right now," Megan MacPherson, the Roseville Deputy City Manager
MacPherson said local businesses want a seat at the table. The mayor is talking to them and is now sharing possible guidelines for reopening, like customers being seen by appointment only, employees wearing face masks, temperature checks, and restaurants opening at half capacity.
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"It would be good for us to slowly keep moving. I know we want to be opening but we have to take precaution of everything and everybody," said Jose Romero, the general manager of a Mel's Diner in Roseville.
He likes the idea of opening halfway with more safety checks in place
"I think it would be very good to wear gloves, masks, especially when we don't know everyone's safe," Romero said.
The process is more complicated than most might know.
"People are asking our city council to lift the orders or adjust them or phase them out and that's not the role of a city council," MacPherson said.
Roseville can come up with the plan, but the state has the final say. Cities can't implement reopening policies that are looser than what the governor sets, and so far, the governor has set nothing. For now, Roseville city leaders are pushing Placer County to set a standard to follow.
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"We fully support health and safety in our community, but at the same time we can't do this forever," MacPherson said.
MacPherson points out that when you start to reopen a city under new safety guidelines, that creates a problem for enforcement.
For example, Placer County recently allowed to dog parks to re-open as long as hand sanitizer was available at each park. Roseville did not have the ability to provide that, so the dog parks stayed closed.
Should things start to reopen soon, some people plan to proceed with caution anyway.
"Quite honestly, even if they were to open tomorrow, I would not be rushing out to a restaurant. I'd probably wait a month myself," said Jon Speak, a Roseville resident.
