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Sycamore, DeKalb mayors support restaurant lawsuit

Both Sycamore Mayor Curt Lang and DeKalb Mayor Jerry Smith on Friday morning said they were supportive of a lawsuit seven DeKalb County restaurant owners filed against Gov. JB Pritzker, seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent shutting down indoor dining.

Filed Thursday, the suit involves the owners of Fatty’s Pub & Grill in DeKalb, Remington Gastropub in Malta, The Lincoln Inn and Faranda’s Banquet Center in DeKalb, Ellwood Steak & Fish House in DeKalb, The Junction Eating Place in DeKalb, MVP Sports Bar in Sycamore and El Jimador Mexican Grill, which opened in downtown DeKalb on Tuesday.

“I guess I’m very supportive of our local businesses,” Lang said. “They’re really stressed a lot with not having the inside dining. Whatever we can do to help them be successful, I’m for. The governor has hopefully our health in mind, but I think selectively choosing restaurants and bars and not other things is kind of a targeted action, I guess.”

The Illinois Department of Public Health announced earlier this week mitigation for Region 1, which includes DeKalb up to Rockford and out to the Iowa border. The main mitigation was the closing of restaurants and bars but also limits gathering to 25 people or less, or 25% capacity of a venue.

As of Tuesday, Winnebago County has been a major contributor to the uptick in the positivity rate. It’s conducted about 40% of the region’s tests, and had a rolling seven-day positivity rate of 9.3%, according to the IDPH. Three of the past four days leading up to the announcement Tuesday, Winnebago County was at 10.3% positive or higher.

Whiteside County on Tuesday (with the three-day lag) came in at 7.5%, Ogle County at 6.9%, Lee County at 9.4% and DeKalb County at 7.4%.

Lang called the system unfair.

“It seems to me that the government has statistics on every county and every county could be easily treated as a single unit, not a group unit,” Lang said. “It would seem more fair. If DeKalb has an issue and Rockford didn’t, Rockford wouldn’t be penalized because of DeKalb having an issue and vice versa.”

Smith said he was not surprised by the lawsuit.

“Our bars and our restaurants, especially our restaurants, have been very, very frustrated by being closed months ago for a certain period of time, then seeing this come out of virtually nowhere with only a couple days notice they were going to be ordered to be shut down,” Smith said. “I think many of them looked at this as one of the last straws. I can certainly see why the lawsuit was filed.”

Smith said he was not only working with the leaders of the 14 DeKalb County municipalities but also supportive of a measure being proposed by State Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, and nine other northern Illinois legislators asking the Illinois Department of Public Health to delay mitigations by at least one week.

He called the conversation with the DeKalb County leaders substantive.

Smith also said, given news of President Trump’s positive coronavirus test late Thursday night, he said there’s a lot of news related to COVID-19 on people’s minds.

“This is all exacerbated by the fact our national leader tested positive for this coronavirus,” Smith said. “I’m sure there’s a lot of thoughts by a lot of people on a lot of, as I suggested, on moving parts.”

Source: The Daily Chronicle

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