SACRAMENTO – Today Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), Senator Brian Dahle (R-Bieber), Folsom Mayor Sarah Aquino, and Sacramento County Supervisor Sue Frost submitted the attached letter to Governor Gavin Newsom and Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Mark Ghaly asking them to update the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy to allow county health departments to authorize the reopening of communities by zip code in areas where COVID-19 metrics meet the state’s requirements for progressing to the next color-coded tier.
The City of Folsom sits in the Northeast corner of Sacramento County and borders El Dorado Hills in El Dorado County. Both communities have similar rates of COVID-19 and are separated by a single freeway exit. And yet, Folsom is deemed higher risk by California’s system. Its business community is forced to comply with more restrictions and its schools have not been able to reopen on the same timeline. This disparity is the result of a reopening framework that ignores the similarities between contiguous communities like Folsom and El Dorado Hills, and instead opts to base these critical decisions on arbitrary county lines.
“Treating similarly situated communities in very different ways creates needless hardship,” Kiley said. “There is no scientific reason why our state cannot allow low-risk areas within counties to reopen their economies and restore the livelihoods of their residents.”
The request comes as other states are adopting a more real world and targeted approach. Last week Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a plan to address clusters of COVID-19 by focusing efforts on the top 20 zip codes in which there have been hotspots throughout the State of New York. This approach not only allows necessary resources to be targeted toward communities most in need, it also assures that the communities that are not experiencing an increase in positivity rates are not negatively impacted by unnecessary restrictions.
Assemblyman Kevin Kiley represents the 6th Assembly District, which includes the Sacramento, Placer, and El Dorado County communities of Cameron Park, El Dorado Hills, Fair Oaks, Folsom, Granite Bay, Lincoln, Loomis, Orangevale, Penryn, Rocklin, Roseville, and Sheridan.
2 comments
I encourage everyone to go to the Blueprint for a Safer Economy and attempt to read how the State is attempting to target an equal outcome between and within the counties rather than a reasonable outcome as these politicians are seeking for their constituents. If I read the requirements correctly, the cities in a county hard hit with COVID cases must reduce their cases down to the lesser hit cities before the lesser hit cities can move to a less restrictive color that reflects their current positive cases. Simply put everyone in the county must be restricted to the most restricted cities in that county. This way the constituents in the hardest hit cities are not treated differently than the other cities in that county. We can not allow hair and nail salons to return to normal in one city while still restricted them in another city. This leads to unequal outcome within the county. Again, go read this yourself.
These people have no idea what they’re doing. The CHINESE VIRUS has already mutated a few times during these 8 months. The heat didn’t kill it as some people said it would. Now with the colder months approaching, we will see it take off like nothing on earth. More and more people will die from it. It thrives in colder weather. These idiots want to put fewer restrictions on economic activities. This will put the public in greater danger. Japan loosened things up a bit after pretty much shutting down the country! Well, that “loosening up” resulted in more people in the countryside coming down with this pestilence so Japan is now back to square one.
Comments are closed.