BY JUSTIN SABATA<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has grinded many institutions in America to a halt, and in some cases, forced a difficult time for couples planning to marry. The Ellis County commissioners hosted a public discussion at Monday\u2019s meeting about the limits recently placed on two Ellis County Fairgrounds buildings.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was announced late last month that, as of Sept. 1, there would be no indoor mass gatherings at either the Unrein or Schenk buildings. As reported by the Hays Daily News<\/a>, events at those buildings have been responsible for some COVID-19 outbreaks in the county. After hearing concerns from the public, a health official and weighing both options, both Commissioner Butch Schlyer and Commissioner Dean Haselhorst decided to reopen the buildings. Commissioner Dustin Roths recused himself from the vote. Schlyer and Haselhorst encouraged wedding planners to take the precautions they deem necessary. \u201cI think those people who are having weddings, gatherings, you need to watch where the hotspots are in the country; you really need to watch who you invite to come to these gatherings,\u201d Schlyer said. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t make a lot of sense to invite people out of Florida and Texas right now.\u201d Schlyer also advised to limit the amount of elderly people at the gatherings. Haselhorst recommended cases be monitored heavily and warned that closures might still happen if there is a new spike in cases. This could lead to the buildings being closed immediately. \u201cThat could be at any venue in Ellis County, as far as that goes,\u201d Haselhorst said. \u201cIf we see a big spike out of any of them, we\u2019re done.\u201d As reported by Ellis County Health Director Jason Kennedy, there were five new cases of COVID-19 in Ellis County as of Monday, raising the active case total to 20. At the time of the report, there was one active hospitalization. The health director presented the trends of percent of positives in the county over the pandemic\u2019s timeline. Percent of positives give a seven-day average of new cases and more accurately displays the current rate of infection in the area. The rate increased in the county during the Fourth of July, peaked on July 18, but has begun to decrease the past two weeks. \u201cWe actually have thankfully seen reductions from July 23,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a significant reduction in our percent of positive or amount of community spread.\u201d Kennedy reported nine primary cases and seven secondary cases from an event during the Fourth of July at one of the county facilities. As a result, 65 people were quarantined. \u201cDid they all contract it at that event? I don\u2019t know that answer, no one does,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI really don\u2019t. It seems plausible; they weren\u2019t sick prior to. Within 14 days after that, they had all tested positive for it.\u201d Kennedy also reported 26.6% of positive cases in the county were associated with a mass gathering. According to Kennedy, his initial plan was to close the county buildings Aug. 1. \u201cAnd not necessarily because we’re at a point where our cases are out of control,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI wanted to close our buildings because it just might keep us from having to close private buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kennedy continued to describe why that would be a much different situation. \u201cWe have a whole different set of metrics that we use if we have to get into restrictions on private individuals,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause that impacts their bottom line, their kids eating, that affects everything in their life if we have to get to there.\u201d The health director stated that, although he empathizes with those affected by the closures, he would not be making any modifications to his plan. \u201cI don\u2019t have a change to my plan that I\u2019m willing to put forth,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cThe plan is fine.\u201d The Public<\/strong> Before the commissioners discussed the issue, they opened the floor to anyone from the public with a concern on the county building closures. Melinda Fross, manager of the Ellis County Fairgrounds, was concerned for those who are now at risk of having to cancel events. \u201cI\u2019ve made a lot of phone calls; we have very upset people,\u201d Fross said. \u201cThey feel that it\u2019s not fair. They\u2019ve put all of their deposits down for everything else and they have a lot of money involved.\u201d Kennedy recommended not opening the buildings until the end of flu season (usually the end of February). However, as described by Fross, other venues remain open despite the county buildings closing. This leads to the concern of residents moving or rescheduling their events. \u201cI know that Jason (Kennedy) said, you know, once the numbers stay down,\u201d Fross said. \u201cBut at the same token, they\u2019re wondering, you know, how long do they have to wait to try to reschedule? Some are rescheduling, some are going elsewhere because there are other venues still open.\u201d Justin Scheck, vice president of the Ellis County Fair Board, was also concerned with other venues remaining open and recommended that if the fairground building are to be closed, then so should other venues. \u201cMy only concern is if we\u2019re going to shut county buildings down, I feel we need to shut all of the venues down,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re serving no purpose of saving cases of coronavirus if we\u2019re going to be moving them just to a different venue.\u201d Staci DeWild, an Ellis County resident with an event scheduled in November, hoped that consideration would be given to those in a similar situation. \u201cI wish that there was a little more consideration about restrictions before just shutting it down,\u201d DeWild said. \u201cA lot of us have planned a lot during all of this, and to just have it up and taken away from us without consideration of cutting them (attendance) down or wearing facemasks or anything is a little disheartening.\u201d The Ellis County Commission is scheduled to meet again this Monday in the Commission Room at the Ellis County Administrative Center. Their meetings can also be viewed on their Facebook<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> pages. BY JUSTIN SABATA The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has grinded many institutions in America to a halt, and in some cases, forced a difficult time for… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":55920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,13675,11],"tags":[13800,13869,13676,13617,13616,11854,13868,12479,103,290],"class_list":["post-55919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-coronavirus","category-news","tag-butch-schlyer","tag-county-commision","tag-covid-19","tag-dean-haselhorst","tag-dustin-roths","tag-ellis-county-commission","tag-ellis-county-fairgrounds","tag-justin-sabata","tag-tiger-media-network","tag-tmn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screenshot_20200804-183233_2.png?fit=1896%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55924,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55919\/revisions\/55924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"