At their regular meeting on Monday, May 4, Woonsocket’s City Council voted to rescind the resolution they had put in place to regulate social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The resolution was put in place to ask businesses, such as bars and restaurants, to change their business practices temporarily in order to protect the lives of their customers and their employees. It asked them to utilize a home delivery and curb-side pick-up plan instead of having customers come into their establishments to congregate. 

As of Monday night, that resolution is no longer in place, and businesses can decide how to continue to conduct their business during the on-going pandemic. Council President Joel Rassel stated, “I think we should follow Governor Noem’s lead on this. We need to rescind our resolution and put out a cautionary message to employers and allow them to then self-regulate how they run their business going forward.”

After Councilman Derek Foos voiced some concerns about the recent report of an employee at Blarney’s in Mitchell testing positive, Rassel commented further, “We are never going to stop it. We have to let individuals and employers in our community take care of themselves. We’re still going to get it; it’s going to come into Woonsocket at some point.”

…Read on about all that was discussed at the meeting in this week’s issue of the Sanborn Weekly Journal!