Supervisor Manny Perez discusses revoking county orders
The Chairman of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors Manny Perez joined News Channel 3's John White live at 6 p.m. to discuss a variety of topics, including the board's recent decision to lift the county's restrictions.
When asked about the board's vote, Perez said:
"There was a lot of confusion, and the confusion was that a lot of people thought we were reopening the economy, that's not the case. As a matter of fact, all the decisions are based on the statistics and the data and based on Dr. Kaiser's recommendations. And he felt that, as we do quite a bit of great work with the county of Riverside and our testing and our contact tracing and ensuring that we prepare ourselves for the surge, although we can always do more, is that we could highly recommend, strongly recommend, facial covering and as well, obviously, social distancing, when it's applicable."
On Friday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approving Perez's proposal to revoke the county health officer's orders, including mandatory face covering and social distancing.
More Details: Board of Supervisors votes to remove county's restrictions
The county will now follow Governor Newsom's stay-at-home orders, which only recommends face covering and social distancing.
Many speakers at Friday's board meeting called for all businesses to reopen, however, as Perez noted, the county does not have the authority to override the Governor's orders.
News Channel 3 evening anchor John White asked Supervisor Perez if he could see the county acting to reopen more businesses before the state moves into the next phases.
"Ultimately, we have to work with our public health officer and with the state of California in demonstrating to the state of California, the governor, that we can meet certain thresholds. But the truth of the matter is that we can not meet, not our county, not any other urban county that is as large as us, to meet that threshold of 1 per 10,000 over 14 days of cases. It's impossible, there's no way, we can do that," Perez responded.
This came up during Friday's board meeting, with the board blasting Governor Newsom multiple times during the 7 hour meeting, particularly the benchmark of no coronavirus deaths in 14 days before opening everything up.
Perez did say there are other state thresholds they are able to meet, like protecting first responders, increased contact tracing, and making sure the availability of disinfectant supplies is acceptable.
Perez did say there are other state thresholds they are able to meet, like protecting first responders, increased contact tracing, and making sure the availability of disinfectant supplies is acceptable.
Perez said the county is putting together the "Readiness and Reopening Framework," a plan that will show the governor that the county is ready to reopen.
"I have a list of mayors that are calling me up to reopen now. And I'm letting the mayors now that we have to work together, we have to have a regional approach, a Coachella Valley wide approach, a county approach, so that we can work with our governor so that the governor is willing to work with us," Perez said.
WATCH THE ENTIRE MEETING BELOW:
