Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - New York State is urging businesses to be ready to present a plan for reopening when the time allows.
Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul told WBEN Monday morning that she remains in constant contact with local businesses that are presenting plans for a modified re-opening in the hopes of being among the first to get the green light.
“It can be one thing to get your customers back, but if your employees don’t feel safe in that environment, if you don’t have protective equipment for them or you don’t have disinfectants, you can’t open,” Hochul said.
Many businesses have already realized reopening will not be like flipping a switch.
“I don’t think it’s so much about rules, I think it’s about what is right for your workers and your business,” said Jill Schlesinger of Jill on Money.
Schlesinger said that businesses will open up cautiously and not at full-go right away not because of government regulation, but because of the uncertain economy they’ll reopen in.
“Service companies are really talking about who is critical and who has to be back at work,” Schlesinger said. “Just because we open, doesn’t mean that someone is going to show up and buy our stuff. We have to be monitoring not just what’s right for workers, but are our customers demanding this?”
“Every business should be aware that their physical environment will have to have social distancing, have to have protective equipment,” Hochul said. “All businesses will know what’s expected of them when we finally give the yellow light to re-open.”
While the popular sentiment is that many businesses will not look the same a year from now as they did before Coronavirus hit, Schlesinger said that many of these changes, like tele-commuting and reliance on AI, were on track to happen eventually and the virus has just sped that process up.
Will Decision on Schools Factor in Re-Opening Timeline?
Last week, Governor Cuomo announced that schools across New York would not return in-class session for the remainder of the academic year.
Before the schools were closed in March, Cuomo made it a point to say that if schools closed many workers would be forced to stay home to look after their children. Does this mean that the decision to keep children out of schools could mean a delayed re-opening?
“It does complicate things a lot for parents,” Hochul said. “It is not a good scenario, it’s very complex. We also don’t want to hold back re-opening sectors of the economy, at least slowly, based on the schools.”
“We wanted to link them at first, but then we realized we couldn’t guarantee the safety of students and teachers.”
