COVID restrictions ease as El Paso County aims to apply for state’s 5-Star Program
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- As Colorado prepares to improve from Level Red to Level Orange on the COVID-19 risk dial, El Paso County commissioners have decided to apply for participation in the state's proposed 5-Star Program to restore in-person dining at restaurants.
This is despite the fact that El Paso County Public Health has announced that the county will move to Level Orange COVID-19 restrictions beginning on Monday. That means restaurants could resume indoor dining at 25% capacity, among other restrictions being eased.
In a 20-minute special meeting Thursday morning, the county's five commissioners voted unanimously to submit an application to the state -- but not without mixed feelings.
"I'm not excited about the program because I think it's more bureaucratic red tape," said Commissioner Holly Williams. "But I think we need to do this to help our businesses. It's important to remember that this is a temporary program and not like a federal program that never goes away once it's created."
Williams also said that according to a third-quarter 2020 report on the nation's gross domestic product (a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period), Colorado has the ninth-worst economy.
"It's our best option," she said. "We need to get people back to work so that we can continue our economic recovery."
Other criticisms of the program -- which would allow affected businesses to reopen sooner by agreeing to go above and beyond current health restrictions -- are that the process to apply, gain approval and wait for the program to start takes too long, and that it would be too costly for many business owners to comply with.
Commissioner Chairman Mark Waller said the upcoming move to Level Orange doesn't eliminate the need to apply for the 5-Star Program, even though Level Orange seems to provide more advantages.
"We won't qualify to apply until this weekend because some of our (COVID) numbers are still too high," he said. "Under Level Orange, restaurants can go to 25% of in-person capacity with customers being six feet apart. Under the 5-Star Program, customers would have to be 10 feet apart. You can't get to 25% capacity with customers spaced 10 feet apart. We just want to do anything we can to help restaurants get back to inside dining as soon as possible."
However, Waller said that the county is still around three weeks away from that, as well as allowing customers into bars, gyms, movie theaters, etc.
"We had already scheduled the meeting to discuss the 5-Star Program," Waller said. "Then, at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, we learned that the governor announced we'd be going to Level Orange. He didn't inform us or consult with us beforehand. So we got on a conference call last night to figure out if we still needed to move forward with the program, and we decided it was the right thing to do -- to go forward and let restaurants decide whether they want to participate in it."
Waller said that El Paso County commissioners have been the most vocal of others within the state in this matter, and believes that is largely responsible for the Gov. Jared Polis' announcement about advancing to Level Orange.
