Idaho City civic, business leaders agree: Let’s violate Little’s coronavirus closures
If it was up to Melissa Head, you wouldn’t be reading this. You wouldn’t know that her Idaho City cafe, Trudy’s Kitchen, along with a handful of other bars and restaurants in Boise County, had been open since May 1, in defiance of the state’s official reopening plan.
Or, at least, you wouldn’t be finding out about it in a newspaper story, where the governor might read about it, too.
“This was all kind of hush-hush,” Head said in an interview at her restaurant.
Under Gov. Brad Little’s phased re-opening plan, restaurants will be allowed to resume dine-in service again as early as this Saturday, May 16. Bars will be allowed to reopen as early as June 13. Little has called a news conference for Thursday afternoon, when he is expected to give restaurants the go-ahead.
But as the governor’s stay-at-home order ended April 30, elected officials here quietly encouraged small businesses to reopen ahead of schedule. The deal: As long as things didn’t get out of hand, they could operate — quietly.
“We’ve asked them as a compromise to follow the guidance of Central District Health for re-opening, and leaving it at that,” said Boise County Sheriff Scott Turner by phone. “The commissioners, the sheriff, our agreement is to support our business owners. For a lot of them, if they weren’t open, they would go out of business.”
This rural county, with a population of 7,163, has yet to report a single positive case of COVID-19. And yet, businesses here are hurting just as much as places with high rates of infection.
The county was hoping simply to preserve businesses here, not drum up attention.
“Obviously the cat’s out of the bag now,” Turner said.
A county dependent on tourism
March is usually when the tourism industry revs back to life in Idaho City. Restaurants hire new employees in anticipation of summer crowds. Businesses shuttered for the winter unlock their doors. Bar regulars reshuffle their seats as touring motorcyclists and ATVers crowd in.
Not this year. March is when the coronavirus pandemic swept into Idaho, forcing shutdowns and Little’s statewide stay-home order designed to protect public health and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.
“The wind just got taken out of those sails,” said Lisa Hanson, owner of the BoCo Sluice Box antique shop and president of the Idaho City Chamber of Commerce. “It really was like a ghost town here.”
Of course, that’s not saying much: Idaho City looks like a ghost town even on a good day. Its Main Street would make the perfect Western film backdrop, with its gold rush-era mercantile buildings and wood-clad porches.
But what Hanson meant is that no one was around. Where Idaho City parking lots are usually lined with cars sporting 1A and 2C license plates, this spring they were empty.
Even though some restaurants tried to stay open, they struggled. After Little announced the stay-home order March 25, Melissa Head closed the doors at Trudy’s Kitchen and laid off 25 employees. She tried to make a take-out business work, but it was hardly worth it. On a typical spring day, she normally would have pulled in $2,000; her take-out business netted an average of $200.
“Tourism is what keeps this place afloat,” Head said. She estimates her restaurant has lost $136,000 in revenue since the order took hold.
Turner, the sheriff, is sympathetic.
“A lot of business owners are looking at losing their business and their livelihood,” he said. “For many businesses, this is the time they start rebuilding their bank accounts to get ready for next winter. … We had to do something to help them out.
“As the sheriff I have the ability to enforce and not enforce what orders I want,” he added. “I don’t have to enforce his order if I don’t want to.”
Police Chief Mark Otter agrees.
“Businesses were saying that if they don’t open now, they won’t open at all,” Otter said. “With Idaho City being so small, a couple of places going out of business could shut the whole town.”
Commissioners, sheriff say they won’t enforce governor’s order
Together, the sheriff’s office, the Idaho City Police Department and the Boise County commissioners put out a news release on April 28 that, to an an average reader, may have sounded vague: “Our local law enforcement agencies … have chosen to educate and work with local businesses, if needed, to ensure safety while being able to open to the public in a profitable manor” (sic).
The business owners they had been talking to got the message: reopen. Without the backing of the sheriff and the city police, Head said she might not have been confident enough to re-open her doors.
“We have the whole community behind us,” she said.
Otter noted that the city’s enforcement really isn’t much different than the state’s. “We’re focused on educating businesses,” he said.
Of course, when the state says educating, it means telling businesses which stage they can open in and on what virus-discouraging terms, and politely encouraging them to follow the order. Otter ‘s idea of educating is somewhat different.
“We go into a business. We let them know they need to be washing and cleaning,” he said. He also makes sure to mention that the business could get in trouble, but not with local law enforcement. “I let them know there could be consequences from the state,” he said.
That’s the major risk these businesses face: intervention from the state, which could revoke certain licenses.
In an interview with Boise State Public Radio this month, Little said that businesses opening early were not only “incredibly disrespectful” to those following the rules, but that the state would consider revoking Idaho-issued licenses for businesses that flout them.
“If it’s a cosmetologist or somebody that has a liquor license, they are putting their license at risk,” he said.
The Central District Health Department requires restaurants to submit reopening plans before they resume service in accordance with the governor’s timeline. Some, like the Gold Mine Saloon, already have applied and received approval — but that doesn’t mean they can reopen before Saturday, said spokesperson Christine Myron.
“It is by no means an endorsement for early opening,” Myron said by phone. “We don’t condone that.”
Boise County Commissioner Alan Ward, who owns a timber business and motel in Garden Valley, says he’s not worried about the state intervening.
“I’m more concerned about the people that have businesses in Boise County than the governor,” he said. “There’s always this perception that government is the authority of the land, when in fact the working people are the true authority.”
Ward said he’d rather support businesses by allowing them to reopen now, rather than face a budgetary crisis when businesses can’t pay their property taxes in a few months.
“This is how we pay for our school bonds, our levies,” he said. “This is how we survive.”
Tourism returns to Boise County, potentially bringing the virus
The sheriff’s news release drew ire from some people in Boise County who saw it as an invitation for tourists to dine, shop and drink here — all the while spreading the illness to unknowing locals.
“Better be prepared for a larger-than-normal influx of out-of-towners who could care less about our community,” wrote one commenter on the sheriff’s Facebook post.
Turner said that since the end of April, visitors have been showing up again. In droves.
“We have beyond summer numbers of people in our county,” Turner said. “People have been flooding out of the Valley and coming here to go fishing, go camping.”
And they would keep coming even if the businesses were forced to close, he said. If that happened, he said problems would follow: “We have all these people up here, and we have no way to provide any services to them.”
The way he sees it, Boise County can either welcome its Treasure Valley neighbors or turn their business away.
Businesses are exercising caution. Some bars have pulled out half of their tables. At the Gold Mine Saloon, a sign on the door encourages patrons to head straight to the bathroom to wash their hands first before ordering a drink at the bar.
“They’re taking it seriously,” Turner said. “It’s not a free-for-all.”
Head said: “We’re following every sentiment of his order for the 15th. We’re just doing it 15 days early.”
At the Idaho City Chamber of Commerce, Hanson said she just wants to help businesses and doesn’t feel the need to advise them on the governor’s orders. That’s not her place, she said.
“We are a mountain town,” she said. “It’s one of those places where people are very ‘of their own mind.’”
Reopening is ‘a gamble,’ sheriff says
On Mother’s Day, Trudy’s Kitchen had its best day in six weeks. First, the outdoor seats filled. Then people tried to sit at tables that Head had marked off so groups wouldn’t be seated too closely.
“We were turning people away,” Head said. “It was just too much.”
At Hanson’s antique store, the Sluice Box, shoppers ducked their heads under low ceilings to peruse through shelves of antique china and tchotchkes.
“People were so happy to have something else to occupy them that it was like, honestly. if you weren’t aware, you would have never known coronavirus existed,” Hanson said.
She knows Boise County can’t stay immune from the virus forever.
The county’s population is especially vulnerable to the virus. Its median age is 53 — 16 years older than the Ada County’s 37. The county is also poorer, with a median household income of $53,942, compared with $63,137 in Ada County.
“I would hate to see it run through this county,” Hanson said. “There’s a lot of poverty in our county. There’s a lot of elderly in our county. It could have a very negative impact if we got rolling. But that will be a concern, no matter if the county opens this week or next month.”
Turner acknowledges that reopening early is a risk.
“It’s a gamble,” he said. “But whether it’s now or whether it’s June, we have to rip the Band Aid off at some point.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
