KC area's consensus on stay-at-home orders starts to fray
KANSAS CITY, Mo. —
The end of the week brought stark disagreement among Kansas City's local health and political leaders who were once united in the fight against COVID-19.
They haven't lost total consensus on a way to reopen businesses and relax stay-at-home orders. But several leaders have started criticizing each other's approaches on how best to keep people safe and move forward with commerce in a global pandemic.
It's definitely not what the region's leaders wanted, according to multiple interviews with KMBC 9 News over the past week.
This week, Clay and Cass counties rolled back stay-at-home orders and accelerated plans to reopen businesses by May 4, mirroring an approach by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.
Wyandotte and Johnson counties have taken similar stances for a potential May 4 relaxation, waiting for guidance from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and their own reopening task forces.
Other jurisdictions like Jackson and Platte Counties, along with Kansas City, have stayed firm on a May 15 date, citing the advice of multiple public health directors across the Kansas City region.
Adding fuel to the often fiery discussion this week, someone secretly allowed a New York Times reporter to listen to a Thursday morning online conference call organized by the nonprofit Mid-America Regional Council – organized for frank discussion among the area's top leaders during the COVID-19 crisis.
The call, one of four in recent weeks, allowed public health leaders, emergency managers, and mayors from Kansas City's nine county region to share ideas on the best way forward.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas confirmed his involvement in the call to KMBC 9 News and said his public health officials still believe May 15 gives enough time to roll out a consistent plan to businesses, churches, and nonprofits to keep people safe.
"I think all of us (on the call) said things pretty directly that represent our constituents," Lucas said. "It is necessary that before we talk about reopening that we actually have a path and plan."
On Thursday, Lucas openly criticized Clay County's plan to roll back its stay-at-home order to May 3 without communicating a full plan to the public.
Clay County health officials defended their decision, saying they are working on a plan to communicate by as early as next week.
Blue Springs Mayor Courtney Ross confirmed to KMBC that he disagreed with Lucas on the MARC conference call, citing confusion with so many different dates on relaxing stay-at-home orders.
"I believe that all of us are looking for the same thing," Ross told KMBC. "That's how do we get back to some level of normalcy."
Ross said it is getting tougher for cities and counties to enforce stay-at-home orders, especially if two dates exist; May 3 and May 15.
"I strongly believe that this region needs to be on the same page because this region -- represented by the (Mid-America Regional Council]) crosses two states, nine counties and 119 municipalities, where the people who cross those jurisdictional lines needs consistency," he said.
REGIONWIDE CALLS FOR CONSENSUS
Kansas City-area leaders have pushed for consistency during the past month on a series of online conference calls organized by MARC.
Elected officials, emergency managers, and public health directors have shared ideas through MARC’s Multiagency Coordination group, which is a little known structure conceptualized after 9/11 to allow information sharing among the Kansas City region's leaders during a crisis.
MARC has outlined its coordination through the COVID-19 pandemic in a document shared with KMBC 9 News.
The leaders of the group say the MAC group holds no decision making power, and leaders are free to take recommendations back to their own jurisdictions.
"Your local City Councils, your local county commissions, your public health authority, those are the individuals that are making decisions," said Lauren Palmer, an assistant community development director/local government services director for MARC.
MARC's conference calls have often allowed leaders to quickly learn about the region's hospital capacity, testing capability, and have even leverage purchasing power among different agencies to buy personal protective equipment like N95 masks.
The group's leaders say they organized quickly after the area’s first stay-at-home orders, so area leaders are not caught off-guard by others’ announcements.
"We focused on the immediate needs the first few weeks of the COVID-19," said Steve Arbo, Lee’s Summit city manager and co-chair of MARC’s Multiagency Coordination group. "I can tell you that probably every waking minute was spent on what was hitting us directly in the face for a while, and I think we did well."
Arbo said immediate concerns are now giving way to discussion about reopening businesses and relaxing stay-at home-orders.
"Would it have been great for us to the day that we started rolling and controlling and restricting to have had a plan of how to unroll and unrestrict?" he said. "That would have been great, but none of us have ever done this before."
Arbo said he is working to bring a range of options to Tuesday's regionwide call with the MAC Group on how to best move forward with phases for re-opening businesses and keep people safe.
The goal now he said is not necessarily to unite on a date for re-opening, but unite on a common language to communicate moving forward.
"My role as a leader is to encourage all of us to get something on paper begin communicating and let people know what we can expect in the future," he said.
KMBC 9 Investigative Reporter Matt Flener wants to hear from you during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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Originally Posted by petegz28:
It isn't even just that. The economy will be gone in 30 - 60 days if we don't start to open things in some way. Thankfully some states are starting as soon as today. It doesn't have to be full blown but it can't be what it has been. We have lost 23 million jobs in less than a month. A few million of those are gone for good now. You go another 30 days of full lock down and you will see economic devastation like you have never seen. Thanks to some Governors it won't happen.
I think we're already to the point of serious change.
I know most people could care less about this stuff, but I just got off an interesting conference call. There was 6500 head of animals on this particular show list being discussed and all were ready to go now. Pack only wanted 300 head. They did take the oldest/fattest of the group, but if the rest of those animals aren't harvested soon they will start keeling over in the pens. Several of those guys have their nuts on the line and will go belly up if things don't change soon and there's not a lot of guys with the financial backing, not to mention the generational acquired intellegence, to even make an attempt at picking up where they left off.
If we're not careful, this deal is going to cause a fundamental change in the Ag world that the general public will be dealing with for decades. It's to the point many on the production side are ready to see people go hungry. These are people who previously believed it was their duty to feed the world, even if it meant they went broke doing it. I asked for a quick vote, and all but one said the money .gov is talking about handing out to make them whole won't come close to covering their losses. I asked for a follow up and the majority said if they're going down they'd rather not get the money and watch the system try to unfuck itself during a hunger issue.
I know they're on full tilt right now, but these are people who would have never even had these thoughts 2 years ago.
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