Lee, Ogle officials share proposed regional reopening plan

DIXON – Before Gov. JB Pritzker's plan to Restore Illinois was announced earlier this month, the Unified Executive Leadership Team of Lee and Ogle counties put together its own plan.

It submitted its proposal to the governor, and recently also posted the full version online.

County and city officials, hospital representatives, health department administrators, first responders and state Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, were among those involved in its creation.

Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss stressed that this is a pilot program designed to supplement, not override, the plan in place from the governor's office.

"The executive order itself carries the authority of law, so local leaders do not have the legal authority to choose not to follow the [governor's] executive order," Langloss said.

"The reason we released it is that's what we told people we were going to do. We issued an initial press release. We told them what our plan was. We told them we would be submitting it to the governor's office for review.

"We expected interaction with the governor's office and have not received it, so the reason we released this press release and our document with our original plan is because that's what we told people we would do."

The team's plan offers a decentralization of the reopening process to hand oversight to local authorities.

"This plan was finalized before the governor announced his plan 2 weeks ago," Langloss said. "The idea was to submit a pilot program for reopening that would help the governor and the state agencies. We realized that they lack the resources to look at a county-by-county reopening or a regional reopening, which is why they created the bigger regions."

The local plan starts with a Phase 0, a planning phase intent on creating data and best practice recommendations and training. The team sees this as a phase to use to educate people on everything from PPE to use of employee screening to social distancing, as well as best practices to open and operate a nonessential business.

Under Phase 0, businesses would be limited to a capacity that's 25% of fire-code regulations and would be required to keep a list of all customers who have entered the location. PPE availability and needs would be tracked, a communications plan would be created and testing capacity would be increased.

"The one thing about Phase 0 is it carries out throughout the phases," Langloss said. "We're always going to be planning for the next phase, and we've already done an incredible amount of work in Phase 0.

"Our local health department administrators are experts in this area. We're working closely with hospital administration at Rochelle and KSB, so we've already really created an impressive framework in Phase 0 that will carry us through the four phases of our plan or carry us through the phases of the governor's plan."

Phase 1 would then reopen some nonessential businesses, asking those businesses to limit occupancy to 25% of fire-code regulations, and identify best practices to reduce social interaction.

Phase 2 would reduce restrictions on social interactions in small groups, allowing for household gatherings and cookouts, while still stressing the use of face masks and documenting who participated in small group gatherings.

Phase 3 would decrease limitations on social gatherings to allow things such as youth sports and dine-in restaurants, and would consider opening health clubs with some restrictions in place.

Phase 4 will be life returning back to normal.

"Whether or not the governor accepts this plan, or if something happens before this new executive order ends, there's work that needs to be done, there's processes and practices that need to be created for us to support the next phase of the governor's plan," Langloss said. "The stuff that we're working on right now is going to be very useful to help our local businesses, to help our communities."

The 7.5-page plan is attached to this story and also can be found at dixongov.com.