Jasper County COVID-19 Advisory Group Seeking State Approval for Recovery Plan

Various lawmakers and groups are working on plans designed to get the economy back on track while dealing with the coronavirus disease.

Jasper County has a COVID-19 Advisory Group working with a regional group on a reopening plan.

Newton Mayor Mark Bolander said the 13-person advisory group is made up of two City of Newton officials including him, two county officials including the county board chairman, two school district officials including the district superintendent, two Emergency Management Agency officials one from the city and one from the county, and Jasper County Health Department Administrator Deborah Riddle and her four department heads.

Bolander said group typically meets by Zoom, and bases their discussions on "what they hear from Springfield". He said if there are gray areas, the group discusses those and reach a consensus.

Early on, he said, the topics were typically what were essential and non-essential businesses. Now, it's more "what phase am I in as far as reopening?"

Bolander said their group is looking at three phases for reopening, rather than the Governor's five-phase "Restore Illinois" plan announced earlier this week. He said their plan has been sent to the governor, and said if it gets approved, there could be openings as soon as Monday morning, others in a couple of weeks, and others around the first of June.

Bolander acknowledges that Jasper County has had more positive cases than any county in the area, but said, "most of those are from one address". That's a reference to the Newton Care Center, which had a significant outbreak of COVID-19 cases. He said that, since then, things have been brought under control.

As to whether a decision might be made in Springfield in such a short span of time, Bolander noted that the governor had announced the Stay-At-Home plans for May for several days, but didn't sign the order until last Friday.