A Sacramento County suburb’s COVID-19 rate is low. Should it be allowed to reopen business?

After months of COVID-19 restrictions in Folsom, some business owners and city officials are asking the state when will enough be enough: When will Folsom reopen?

Restaurants and other businesses worry they are losing customers to El Dorado Hills, a city just a single freeway exit away where the public health restrictions are less severe. Seven months into the pandemic, workers have been laid off at restaurants along historic Sutter Street, and some people worry business will be damaged even more when the rain starts and outdoor service becomes difficult.

The issue? Folsom is in Sacramento County, which recently moved into the state of California’s “red tier” for coronavirus spread risk. El Dorado County, just a short drive away, is in the orange tier, meaning restaurants and many other business sectors can operate at higher capacity.

Business advocates and political leaders in Folsom blame the state’s metric system.

At roughly 5.3 cases per 1,000 residents, Folsom has by far the lowest infection rate of any city in Sacramento County, as well as a lower rate than the unincorporated area of the county. But counties are judged by their overall numbers – and places like the city of Sacramento and Elk Grove have infection rates that are contributing to Sacramento County’s standing in the red tier.

“The current system for evaluating local health metrics and allowing communities to reopen is based on a countywide structure that fails to take into account vastly different data points within the same county,” a letter from Folsom officials to Gov. Gavin Newsom written last week said. “The City of Folsom, which we all represent, is a perfect example of this.”

A new policy announced recently by the Newsom administration may complicate Folsom’s campaign. The state has a new “equity metric” that requires counties to improve infection rates and testing capabilities in disadvantaged neighborhoods before they are able to move to a less restrictive tier of reopening.

In the city of Sacramento, many disadvantaged communities, including Del Paso Heights and areas of south Sacramento, have had huge numbers of cases. Advocates and residents have said not enough has been done to protect those communities and that there are worries the numbers will only get worse once the winter weather arrives.

Folsom, El Dorado COVID infection rates

Folsom leaders are arguing for a shift to a community-based reopening plan where ZIP codes, rather than counties, should be evaluated for COVID-19 prevalence, and have restrictions lifted accordingly.

Folsom has a slightly lower infection rate than El Dorado Hills. Yet restaurants in that city can open at 50% capacity, and movie theaters and fitness centers can serve more people. In Sacramento County, restaurants can only serve indoors at 25% capacity and gyms at 10%.

“This disparity is the result of a reopening framework that ignores the similarities between contiguous communities like Folsom and El Dorado Hills, and instead opts to base these critical decisions on arbitrary county lines,” read the letter from Folsom’s elected officials.

Rosario Rodriguez, owner of Sutter Street Taqueria and a candidate for City Council, said she started advocating for a community-based reopening in early September after a record heat wave and unhealthy air quality made outside dining impossible, and her business took a hit.

“It was really frustrating for me, as a restaurant owner, to only offer outdoor seating where nobody wanted to sit outside because of the heat. Yet here we are, people can drive a mile and a half up the road and have indoor dining,” she said in an interview. “And so that’s why I’m raising the concern of something is just not right with this process.”

“It’s a concern that Folsom businesses are being held back, being held hostage as we’re waiting for the rest of the county,” she added.

Rodriguez’s restaurant occupies a small store front along Folsom’s historic Sutter Street. When COVID-19 restrictions were enacted earlier this year, she had to reduce her dining space by more than half, going from 12 tables inside her restaurant to now having five tables outside. She said the city has given Sutter Street businesses the opportunity to extend into the street during the weekends, but even with that, it still provides no where near the revenue the restaurant was bringing in before the pandemic.

Rodriguez said she’s had to cut staff and reduce her remaining employees to part-time.

“Going through ZIP codes, it would be one of the safest ways to start to open up our economy,” she said.

A few doors down at Citizen Vine, owner Lisa Gomez said she signed a petition in favor of community-based reopening.

“We’re totally for that. We think it makes more sense,” she said. “To be able to drive two miles to El Dorado Hills, I myself have done that to have dinner over there. So it’s been a struggle for the businesses here to stay in business competing with Placer . . . and El Dorado. So I hope they change it, especially with the weather changing. That’s our next concern.”

Rich Veale, executive chef of Sutter Street Steakhouse, said the lockdown has had a “near catastrophic” impact on his business and a quicker reopening could be appealing, but only if it could be done safely.

“We have our vision not just on the next six weeks but the next year, two years,” he said. “We don’t want to get in this negative feedback cycle. We don’t want to get stuck in that rut. If we need to do what we need to do for right now, we’ll do that.”

Sue Frost, who represents Folsom, Orangevale and Citrus Heights on the board of supervisors and signed the letter to Newsom, said the biggest obstacle in implementing this plan is convincing the state to apply its guidelines and data by ZIP code, rather than by county.

“We’re not advocating for something that’s not safe,” she said. “We want to open safely. We’re just saying if you go by the rules that the state health department is giving us and you apply it by ZIP code, it would allow many more businesses to open and do it safely.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM.