Restaurants almost full. Gyms open. The Rose showing movies again. Booklovers at the library. Swimming at Mountainview. Soccer, softball games on glorious Spring days. Open mics, church services, street music. Beer drinking outside at the Pourhouse. Whale watching. Everything not open before now open again.

This could be Jefferson County in a little over three weeks if our County Commissioners don’t again drag their feet.

It could have been Jefferson County this coming week if they had not wasted the chance we earned at an early open. Counties whose leaders weren’t lazy and dilatory will be moving into Phase 3 of the Governor’s reopen scheme this coming week. But not Jefferson County.

It is possible we might again fall behind the rest of the state unless our leaders wake up and work with the same sense of urgency as the people who pay their salaries. You see, we don’t get to move forward unless our Board of County Commissioners wants us to move forward. Phase 3 is no longer automatic. Whether any of the joyous things in the first paragraph happen is all up to them.

To recap: At the end of April Governor Inslee released a list of ten counties with negligible COVID risk and adequate medical preparations that would be allowed, should they request, to move into Phase 2 reopening ahead of the rest of the state. Some County Commissions worked over the weekend and put in their variance request within one to two days. Their businesses were opening by the end of the week.

Jefferson County dragged the process out for three weeks with one meeting after another. About twenty counties were in Phase 2 by the time our county’s Board of Health finally approved a request for variance on Thursday May 21. All county commissioners are members of the Board of Health. In many counties, the commissioners convened immediately following the BOH meeting to approve, in their role as the Board of County Commissioners, the variance they had just approved in their role as members of their respective Boards of Health. They didn’t waste time. They did not forget their communities were hurting.

But Jeffco’s commissioners took an entire 24 hours more to rest and reconvene on the afternoon of Friday, May 22 for all of half an hour to vote the same way they had the day before. They thought that the Washington Secretary of Health would not approve the request until at least the following Monday. He turned it around that evening. Commissioner Kate Dean actually complained about how quickly that happened.

The Governor has abandoned his rigid 4 Phase plan, and will now allow counties to move forward on a case-by-case basis, so long as they demonstrate the required metrics for low virus activity and medical preparedness.  As soon as three weeks pass after entering Phase 2, counties may seek to move into Phase 3. It also means that unless county commissioners act to enter Phase 3, the county remains where it is regardless of what happens statewide.

Those counties that acted diligently to move into Phase 2 can ramp up for Phase 3 as early as June 3. But, as crazy and foolish as it looks to anyone else, because Jefferson County’s commissioners approved a plan that made us dependent on Clallam County’s reopening–delayed until June 1–the soonest we could seek going to Phase 3 would be June 24–even though we otherwise qualify right now. That June 24 date depends on the Commissioners acting on June 1, which won’t happen. So our earliest Phase 3 date is more realistically further days, if not weeks later than that.

It remains to be seen how quickly our lethargic BOCC will move. They could again dilly-dally and ignore the pleas of the overwhelming majority of businesses wanting to open quickly.  Restaurants, in particular, need fast action. They desperately need to get above the 50% capacity limit in Phase 2 to the 75% allowed in Phase 3. Restaurant margins are incredibly skinny. Very few can operate profitably at half capacity with the recent steep increases in food costs as well as the increased operating costs imposed on them by the Governor’s micromanagement of restaurant operations.

An excellent piece of news that flattens at least one speed bump: the Governor is not requiring action by the Board of Health as a precondition for a county to move into Phase 3, as he did for an early move into Phase 2.  If you read our coverage on the dysfunctional, hysterical, unscientific, self-centered, uninformed, hairbrained, and incompetent (and other fitting adjectives and expletives) Board of Health proceedings you’ll understand why the Governor has done us a favor by cutting them out of the process for entering Phase 3.

If you need help coming up with those adjectives and expletives, here’s the reporting that may provide a few prompts: Kate Dean & Co. to Retail and Restaurants: “Drop Dead”

Here is the Governor’s county-by-county plan press release with a link to the plan itself. Unlike the early phase 2 option, this plan does not explicitly require Board of Health action, and prevent amendment by the county commission.

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