COVID-19 news: KC plans soft reopening, some Johnson County pools will stay closed
Large swaths of Kansas and Missouri saw a reopening of businesses Monday as restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the new coronavirus were lifted.
That included Platte, Clay and Cass counties in the metro area, where salons, retail stores and restaurants in cities like North Kansas City, Gladstone and Liberty were able to open their doors.
But restrictions remain in place for Kansas City, which is planning a “soft reopening” Wednesday.
The Kansas City area saw its sharpest rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases on Monday. With 123 cases additional cases, the area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas has recorded 2,507 cases.
Jackson, Johnson and Wyandotte counties remain under stay-at-home orders until May 11.
Starting Wednesday in Kansas City, nonessential businesses that don’t draw the general public, such as an advertising agency or law firm, will be allowed to reopen, so long as they abide by social distancing rules.
Smaller businesses that serve the general public and were previously deemed “nonessential,” such as some retailers, also can open.
Businesses or gathering places with more traffic, such as restaurants, libraries, community centers and gyms, will stick to the May 15 opening date but under new rules dubbed by Mayor Quinton Lucas as “10-10-10.”
In the first phase or reopening, restaurants must operate at 10% of their normal capacity or have 10 people in the establishment, whatever is greater. That includes the employees needed to run the business.
Bill Teel, executive director of the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association, said restaurants will lose money if they reopen their dining rooms under those restrictions.
Besides increasing capacity, the restaurants also discussed target dates for each phase of the reopening so they can make firmer plans.
“We want to get Kansas City open and move to the future,” Teel said. “We’re all about safety. We clean, sanitize; we sterilize. We are safer than retail places now where people can pick up items and put them back down and walk off.”
Lucas is also facing resistance in the allocation of funding for coronavirus-related expenses.
Kansas City, Lucas said, should receive a share of funding from each county that is proportional to the percentage of Kansas City’s population within each county.
Clay County is due $29.3 million from the federal CARES Act.
A key issue that surfaced at an emergency meeting of the Clay County Commission was what portion of that does it have to share with Kansas City, which accounts for 54% of the county’s population.
Under Lucas’s plan, Kansas City would get $15.8 million, or 54%. But the commission has approved a distribution of $11.6 million.
Monday’s meeting adds to emerging divisions across the Kansas City region of how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, with cities and counties adopting different policies of when and how to re-open local economies.
In Johnson County, Prairie Village and Roeland Park have decided to keep their cities’ public pools closed this summer, officials announced this week.
In Kansas, 5,245 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and 136 people have died. A total of 38,603 people have been tested in the state.
In Missouri, 8,754 people have been infected and 358 have died. A total of 94,904 patients have been tested in Missouri.
