Governor Northam has begun the phased approach to reopen our economy in the Commonwealth. On Friday, May 8, his office will lay out seven separate guidelines to ensure that businesses, by sector, safely ease their restrictions as they move into Phase One and Phase Two of operations. These guidelines, unique to each of the seven business sectors, will have a common threshold throughout the state giving each region some discretion in increasing or decreasing the guidelines.
In Loudoun County, we clearly have not seen a downward trajectory for the required 14 consecutive days. While we have been hovering plus or minus 20 cases a day, we have seen some spikes over the weekend of 90 cases and as recent as May 4, 37 cases. The County Health Director, David Goodfriend, suggests that prior to entering into Phase One of the President's economic recovery plan cases in Loudoun County should not exceed 10 new cases per day for 14 consecutive days.
On Friday, May 8, the Town Manager's within Loudoun County held a meeting with both County Administrator Tim Hemstreet and County Health Director David Goodfriend to discuss resumption of limited summer activities for the months of June and July, and to collaborate on a common agreed upon phasing strategy for both the County and incorporated towns. The towns in the County reached a consensus to limit social gatherings and festivities in the months of June and July and have suggested the towns work together with the County in moving the July celebrations to Labor Day. Council may want to consider moving other Town events to later in the year, such as the Wine and Food Festival, dependent on regional data on COVID-19 health and safety conditions as measured over June and July.
All town departments are maintaining a high level of service delivery, despite the organizational constraints that the COVID pandemic has challenged us with. Our police department will be instrumental in managing, communicating and encouraging adherence to the Governor's Phase One recommendations to ensure that we maintain the highest level of protection to our residents, business owners and employees that have been called back to resume interim or partial duties and responsibilities.
Businesses are dependent on face forward communication and service delivery, such as restaurants and personal services establishments, such as barbers and hair salons, will have some of the most stringent restrictions until our curve in new cases is flattened. For those establishments, higher standards of social distance protocol will be set forth and where possible, businesses and customers will be encouraged to wear face coverings.
The town's COVID-19 communications team will be publishing the Governor's guidelines for each business sector to assist in both communicating and educating this criteria for business owners, citizens and employees. The goal of our community, as communicated by our Council leadership and administration, should be uniform in encouraging our community to move slowly through the phasing plan and continue to use the utmost precaution to avoid new spikes that could jeopardize our economic reentry.
One of the most significant challenges that our Finance team is experiencing is the lack of adherence to the requirement for restaurants to complete their filings for Meals Tax collection for the two months that are in the arrears (March and April) as well as the two months, which are scheduled for a Meals Tax holiday (May and June). These filings are critical to accomplish three objectives: 1) assess the true economic impact to our restaurant community in order for the town to seek federal/state economic recovery funds; 2) assess the General Fund revenue fiscal impact in order to anticipate budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year; and 3) a determination of which restaurants may need economic stimulus funds that could be forthcoming from local allocations from the state of Virginia's CARES Act allocation.