Mayor Nicholls meets with Governor’s staff, ready to re-open businesses

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - Mayor Doug Nicholls met with staff at Governor Ducey's office to discuss the next steps on re-opening businesses in Yuma.

The mayor is focused on protecting the community and getting businesses back up and operating while still staying safe.

Mayor Nicholls meeting with personnel at the governor’s office and among the conversation - new ways to provide mass testing for the workforce and even schools.

“The great advantage of that program, whether it's being used for the workforce, or another population of people. That's non-evasive, but it also gives you results seven days ahead of when normal test results would be available,” the mayor said.

“And we're encouraging the governor to help fund some tests for our school so as our schools are opening. They can test the school population,” he added.

The County’s positivity rate must be under 10%, for two weeks, for businesses to start reopening only partially.

Here's the current stats:

As Yuma numbers continue to decrease, Mayor Nicholls says businesses can submit applications to the state to determine when they can reopen and with what occupancy.

“Businesses that haven't gone through the attestation process will be able to open under whatever those guidelines that easy DHS has published for instance, for gyms I think it goes up to 25% occupancy. A lot of the same measures will be in place as far as cleanliness and scheduling.”

Nicholls also explained the many important things the city has done since the start of the pandemic which includes making sure first responders had appropriate supplies, the many testing events sponsored by the city, and also supporting local businesses.

“Through our C.A.R.E.S Act we've given grants to those businesses that have been closed to try to help offset some of the costs, realizing that those grants we're not going to solve anyone's financial issues and their businesses but hopefully, let them kind of resolve some of the pressure,” Nicholls said.

COVID-19 was not the only topic during the meeting, Mayor Nicholls also in disagreement with a request to transfer water from La Paz County to Queen Creek, a city in Maricopa County.

“It will start this cascading effect of moving all sorts of water to support growth in areas that are not where the water is was originally assigned to so for yuma county, it's particularly important being at the very end, as it would be at the Colorado River, we do have very strong water rights,” the Mayor said.

Mayor Nicholls says “we cannot drain water from rural Arizona and expect it to survive.”

With him being the mayor of Arizona's largest rural city, Nicholls tells me he will stay on top of this matter.