The Longmont City Council is tripping over themselves to bend the knee and show obedience to Gov. Polis’s random acts of lockdown.
The council is expected to approve a letter at Tuesday’s meeting ordering neighboring Weld County to “respect, adopt and enforce all applicable state laws regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The problem with Longmont’s actions, and there are many, Weld County is not ignoring state law regarding the never-ending COVID-19 situation.
There is no state law.
Polis is completely bypassing the state legislature — our elected representatives — to operate Colorado in an autonomous manner through hundreds of executive orders that are subject to change on His whim.
Not only has Polis managed to politicize the virus, now he’s succeeded in turning neighbor against neighbor to join in his arbitrary demands, like the sudden creation of red zones with less than a week’s notice that thousands of Colorado restaurants had to close dine-in service resulting in mass layoffs.
Dining in was perfectly safe for months, restaurants across the state spent thousands of dollars to make it so and follow new health standards.
Then poof!
Polis decreed it no longer safe because of a spike in COVID cases at restaurants health care and education facilities before Thanksgiving.
That’s not science. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to close small businesses that don’t have the lobbying power or campaign donation strength to stop Polis from turning them into the bad guys.
Cases linked to restaurants spiked the week of Nov. 1 with 26 statewide, compared to 72 at child care and education facilities, 39 at health facilities, and 35 in manufacturing and construction.
See all the numbers here.
Actual case numbers aside, and laws, Longmont is demanding Weld County signal their virtue:
“We ask you to make a public statement to Weld County residents encouraging all to wear masks, to practice social distancing and to hand wash in order to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus.”
As if Weld County officials told residents to stop washing hands.
That’s not at all what this is about.
The problem is, numbers spiked higher in Longmont, and the liberal enclave wants someone else to blame.
From the council’s draft letter: “Within Boulder County, Longmont continues to have the highest number of cases of any municipality. It of course leads us to wonder if these higher case numbers in Longmont are a direct result of the alarming and continuing rise in cases in Weld County.”
Maybe Longmont should spend more time policing their own residents and locking them up for socializing in large groups, going to church or sneaking into a restaurant.
Longmont is starting to sound like that middle child in the back seat of the car always whining, “They’re touching me! Make them stop touching me!”