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| This week has been very busy starting with the board meeting on Monday. At the board meeting we appointed an ethics officer, Jim Stortzum, and the ethics commission, Scott Kaspar, Kevin Scanlan and Dave DeYoung. All of these were approved unanimously. We also approved a resolution that stated the following: The Village President and Board of Trustees of the Village hereby call for the Illinois General Assembly to reconvene to address the health, safety and welfare of Illinois residents in light of COVID-19 by exercising their valid authority to legislate in those areas. The Village President and Board of Trustees of the Village call for the Executive Branch to make publicly available the data, models and assumptions used for decision making by the State of Illinois to aid local authorities as they set local plans for re-opening. A specific example of transparency and disclosure is the IHME website.The Village President and Board of Trustees of the Village call for the General Assembly and the Governor to articulate a reopening plan for the economy as quickly as possible with reasonable guidelines designed to promote the health and welfare of Illinois residents, including the residents of the Village. First, while the governor is doing his best to address the pandemic, our legal advice informs us that he may being extending beyond his legal authority to try to combat the pandemic without the legislature’s assistance. The General Assembly is the appropriate body to deliberate and resolve these issues and they must get back to work. It is time for them to reconvene and do their jobs. Second, in the interest of transparency, we need the governor to share the information and data he uses in his deliberative process that supports his decision making in this critical time. The governor has had to make a lot of difficult decisions during these challenging times with limited information. I think this is well understood, which is why he has been given a lot of latitude and appropriately so. (For example, we are 50 days into his 30-day emergency declaration and 47 days into his stay at home order). On April 23rd, the governor introduced new analysts and modelers that he is using to inform his decisions. These experts indicated that they were using only State of Illinois information and that the “stay at home” order had saved 30,000 lives. Additionally, the governor’s executive order states that without his actions Illinois would have had over 100,000 hospitalizations, 25,000 cases in ICU Beds and used over 20,000 ventilators. All of these numbers imply a total case load, according to their models, of 500,000 cases. Using that statement and the number of cases implies a death rate of 26.5%. That is 6.5% higher than even the known hospitalization rate and 22% higher than the known death rate. Clearly this is not plausible. In fact, it is misleading and hyperbole. What is worse is this appears to be the models the governor is using for decision making. This makes it even clearer that the governor needs to be transparent with the data he is using to support his decision making. Saying that you are making data driven decisions doesn’t mean that you are actually doing so or that you are using good data. If the governor is confident in his decision making and it is data driven, then he should share it. We would welcome it as we make our own decisions that are best for Orland Park. The vote on this resolution was 5 to 1. I’ll leave it up to you to guess the lone dissenter. I am not sure how anyone could vote against these requests. We forwarded the resolution to the governor and several legislators. One legislator, who is a Democrat, said to me, “I don’t understand how a trustee could vote no on this, unless he is a grandstander.” I guess this trustee doesn’t think the legislature should earn their pay or that the governor needs to be transparent. This is just a guess on my part, because the trustee made no comments nor offered any amended language even though he commented to the press that he was “uncomfortable with the language.” Tuesday’s video discusses our resolution and the latest Covid Data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fN350u37g On Tuesday I was interviewed by Dan Proft & Amy Jacobsen about our resolution. You can listen to that here at about 34:22 https://560theanswer.com/content/all/morninganswerpodcasts. I also released a video discussing the resolution and walked through an explanation and slide show of the information implied by Governor Pritzker’s models. Also, on Tuesday, the Restore Illinois Plan was introduced by Governor Pritzker. I have had the time to review this plan. You should be comforted knowing that the village assembled an excellent team in April, because, minus the fancy name, 90% of the village’s plan is the same as the Restore Illinois Plan. I want to thank the governor for introducing the Restore Illinois Plan this week. It is a good start, though there are few areas where I think it can be improved. According to Restore Illinois, the requirements of moving to Phase 3 and Phase 4 are very similar to the requirements that the village had to move to subsequent phases. One big difference is that the governor is requiring that these trends be held for 28 days. This is 14 days longer than what the CDC & federal government recommends. Every other state plan uses 14 days to move from phase to phase consistent with the CDC recommendations. I believe that the CDC recommendation should be followed. Another big difference is the Restore Illinois requirement to move to the last phase before allowing groups larger than 50 people. According to the plan there needs to be a vaccine or highly effective treatment available or no new cases. We think that this is unreasonable. A mass-produced vaccine is at least 2 years away, if an effective one is ever developed. A highly effective treatment may take decades. For example, it took over half a century to find an effective treatment for the flu. Lastly, no new cases would mean that the virus has been eradicated. In the history of mankind there has only been one human virus eradicated–small pox–and that took over 200 years and a worldwide vaccination program to do so. When we embarked on the “stay at home” order, the goal was to flatten the curve in order to avoid overwhelming our hospital system. This has clearly been accomplished. In fact, hospitals have been furloughing medical staff because of the lack of utilization of the system. Changing the goal to eradication or complete control of the virus is not feasible or realistic. Another difference is restaurants. The village suggested opening with outdoor and indoor seating that maintained at least 6 feet separation. The governor’s plan would not allow restaurants to open until July. Frankly, most of our small, family owned restaurants will not survive that long. They need to open and this can be done safely with reduced seating. Several states began opening restaurants with limited capacity, social distancing and increased sanitation measures this week. We will closely monitor those states to see if indeed this is a safe way to gradually open. One new idea that we will be implementing when we open is to allow restaurants to use a portion of their parking lots for outdoor seating. Since they will be at 50% capacity in their existing space, it will allow them to serve more customers. The social distancing requirements between the plans is similar. However, two areas that we don’t think the state addresses adequately are the vulnerable population and long-term care facilities. In Illinois, 87% of all deaths are over age 60, over 95% of deaths have some other compromising condition, and long-term care facilities represent approximately 25% of all deaths. It will be important that these groups follow the stay at home order as much as possible and that long-term care facilities do not have visitors until we are in the final phase. It also means that businesses should try to make special accommodations for their employees that are vulnerable. This video from Thursday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YauXlc6RMFM&t discusses the plan in more detail. As you recall, way back on March 28th, we did a video that included health experts that encouraged going outside and getting exercise and fresh air. We left our parks and trails open because of these recommendations and to date there have been NO cases tied to our parks and open spaces. Thank you for using them responsibly. Please continue to do so. I will continue to work towards a safe and measured re-opening of our economy. I believe that based on the milestones required by the governor, our region is ready to move onto the next phase. I am hopeful that the governor will start communicating with the mayors and listen to their input. We have a very good understanding of what is happening in our communities. In non-coronavirus news, this week, on May 6th, I was served the lawsuit from Joe LaMargo both personally and for my campaign, Keith For Mayor. I feel sorry for the poor gentleman, who was in his 60’s, who had to serve this frivolous lawsuit during a pandemic. Now I suppose the town spokesman for Cicero knows that I was served on May 6th, not in April when he alleged that I lied about being served. I am sure you will be hearing more about this, but I will not be commenting while the process moves along. More importantly, I want to point out that during this pandemic, the Village of Orland Park is fortunate that George Koczwara is our Village Manager. He is a true professional and is doing an outstanding job. I am happy to announce that due to the improved weather we have been able to open a lot more of our outdoor recreation areas. Things that are open include The Dogout Dog Park, the Skate Park, Lake Sedgwick Fishing and Kayaking, Pickleball Courts, Tennis Courts, Frisbee Golf at Doogan Park, all walking and bike paths and all of our parks (except playgrounds). Please get outside, enjoy the fresh air and the sunshine, just like the experts from Palos Health recommended over a month ago. I believe that we will get through this if we work together. Stay safe and Happy Mother’s Day to my wife and all of you moms out there. Keith |
