AURORA | A group of Aurora City Council members want indoor dining to re-open across the city to prevent eateries from permanently closing up shop.
Mayor Mike Coffman and councilmembers Francoise Bergan, Marsha Berzins, Dave Gruber and Curtis Gardner sent a letter to Gov. Jared Polis and state and local health experts this week asking for indoor dining to resume at a limited capacity.
Currently, due to the rise in COVID-19 cases all metro-region counties are operating at the Red Level on the Stay at Home dial, a tool developed by the state to “balance the urgent need to contain the virus with the need for localized guidance during the pandemic.” Under this level, bars are ordered closed and restaurants can only offer outdoor dining or curbside and delivery services.
Outdoor dining, which many restaurants relied on to stay afloat during the summer, has become a less viable option as temperatures have dropped and snow becomes a regular weather forecast.
“We want our restaurant businesses and workers to know that we stand with them and will do whatever we can to help them survive during this pandemic. Aurora has many locally owned independent small businesses, many of them immigrant owned, which cannot afford to be shut down a second time,” the group wrote in the letter. “According to the Colorado Restaurant Association, 24% of restaurants have reported that they will likely close permanently within one month if indoor dining does not reopen.”
The letter cites a Colorado Restaurant Association a statistic that only between 1%-2% of infections are being traced back to restaurants. It”s unclear how they determined that number.
It’s unclear what that statistic looks like in Aurora, specifically. The Tri-County Health Department’s contact tracing data shows restaurants are second among a list of common places people who tested positive for the virus reported going, but that data only exists for Sept. 29 through Dec. 1.
Aurora has been in Level Red since mid-November.
“Governor Polis, we do not want our Aurora residents to lose their businesses and livelihoods. We want our residents to be safe and healthy and also have jobs so they can take care of their families and obligations,” the letter says. “The pride of ownership and self-sufficiency is important to Aurorans. They want their businesses to be open and they want to work. Businesses are willing to do whatever it takes to remain open and we want to help them. They give back to our communities.”
The local lawmakers’ plea may be answered, at least to some degree, despite the dial’s direction that no variances be implemented during Level Red.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment launched the “5 Star State Certificate Program” this week. It “encourages businesses to implement safety measures beyond what is already required by public health orders and guidelines that will help slow the spread of COVID-19.” Businesses that do so accelerate their re-opening.
During Level Red, a certified restaurant could operate at Level Orange (25% capacity for indoor dining) if the county has had a two-week sustained decline in cases and a percent positivity under 10%, or improving, over the prior two weeks.
Douglas County announced its application for the program on Friday.
While cases are significantly fewer since the state moved Aurora counties to Level Red, they’re still occurring at much higher rate than they were over the summer. State officials said this week Colorado was able to avoid a significant surge of cases following the Thanksgiving holiday and hope that trend continues for Christmas.