On Monday night, the Roseau City Council passed a resolution asking Gov. Tim Walz to allow all businesses in the community to open. Speaking with KROX on Wednesday, Mayor Jeff Pelowski said the definitions of critical and non-critical had created a double standard in rural communities. “With the guidance that we’re getting from the state on the different executive orders, what’s evolved is the definitions of critical or essential business,” said Pelowski. “Critical versus non-critical, they’re right next door. You can be critical if you sell a hammer but non-critical if you just sell clothing. There is a double standard, one can be open, and the other store, with the new directive, can do home delivery or curbside.”
While Pelowski said he respects the tough position the governor is in and knows that he is doing his best, all businesses in a small town are critical, and Roseau wants to level the playing field. “Our thoughts at the council level is that in small rural towns like Roseau, every business downtown in critical,” said Pelowski. “It doesn’t matter if they’re selling clothing or selling a hammer; they are all critical. After the flood we had in 2002, where we had to rebuild the town basically from scratch, it took us almost 15 years to get all the downtown buildings occupied. Now, these businesses are barely hanging on. Some of them are telling me they can’t wait for the governor. They’re not sure they are going to be viable by May 18. We’re asking to level the playing field.”
The City of Roseau also tried to create some guidelines under the executive order for more businesses using some of the legal rules under the executive order. Unfortunately, Pelowski said the intent of the guidance didn’t get clearly communicated to businesses resulting in a belief the city was being more restrictive, leading to push back from retailers. “We were trying to innovative because when order 20-48 came out from Gov. Walz, it only allowed curbside or at-home delivery online,” said Pelowski. “We thought what if we could develop some sort of a hybrid where they could still meet the intent of the order, allowing them to get their merchandise out of the store because people can’t come into the store. We tried to set up a legal process for that to meet the intent of the order, yet help the businesses out. We have to follow the law but was there a way we could interpret the law to try to help the businesses, and it was sent out to our retailers, our civic and commerce on Friday, and a lot of those retailers misinterpreted our intent.”
During a special meeting on Tuesday, the Roseau County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution asking for that all businesses in the county be allowed to open and, as did the Thief River Falls City Council for their community. The Warroad City Council is expected to pass a resolution during their meeting at noon today as well, asking the governor to open their businesses.
KROX contacted Crookston Mayor Dale Stainbrook about whether he was considering or planned to present a similar resolution to the Crookston City Council at their meeting on Monday, May 11. Stainbrook said he doesn’t think Crookston will pass a resolution Monday and will wait for an update to the governor’s orders. “At this point, I’m saying no,” said Stainbrook. “It hasn’t really been talked about. (COVID-19) is up to 43 cases now in Polk County, we continue to rise. I hear that Mark (Johnson, State Senator – EFG) and Deb (Kiel, State Representative – Crookston) are pushing to open up businesses, but I think that we’re just probably going to hold off until the 18th when the governor decides what to do next. The governor has opened up some; a business can do curbside that chooses too. Granted, there are still hair salons, tattoo parlors, and whatever that can’t open up yet. That’s where we’re at unless the council has another idea. We can bring it up under – other – on Monday, but I think at this point we’re going to hold tight and wait until the 18th to see what the governor has to say.”
Stainbrook said he didn’t know how many positive cases of COVID-19 there are in Pennington or Roseau County, but that in Polk those numbers are continuing to increase, not taper off making opening all businesses a tough question. “I don’t know how many COIDS are in Pennington or Roseau County,” said Stainbrook. “Right now, we continue to rise in Polk County. It’s not tapering off. We continue to rise in the State of Minnesota. As of yesterday, the deaths were down to single digits. It’s a tough question. I get it, businesses are struggling, but we want this to taper off too. We don’t want it to continue to rise our county or the state. I guess back to the original question as far as the resolution. I think right now unless the council wants to do a letter to the governor, we’re going to wait until the 18th and see what he has to say then.”
KROX has spoken with a couple of Crookston City Council members who have said that there are members of the council asking for a resolution to be added to the agenda.
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