It has been a full week since Erie County implemented a mask mandate as Phase 1 of its four-phased approach to try and reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and reduce hospitalization numbers in the county. This mask mandate requires all people to wear a mask before entering any public building or business in Erie County.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the county and its Department of Health will re-evaluate their COVID-19 situation come Dec. 13 and then make a decision whether to extend the mask mandate, elevate to Phase 2 (vaccine mandate), or end the mandate in place.
It has also been a week for local businesses to get acclimated to the mask mandate, and getting customers, patrons and staff used to wearing a mask again when entering their facilities.
While many businesses are doing what they can to comply with the order in place by Erie County, they are having a tough time having to police people to wear their masks in and around the building.
"We are not against masks. We are not against people getting vaccinated. We are not against any of that. But we think these mandates cause a lot of problems," said Greg Duell - Co-owner of the Duff's at the Eastern Hills Mall. "They divide people, they back people into corners, they're counterproductive, and eventually they'll force business to discriminate. We just are not in any way wanting to associate our business with discrimination."
While some people are complying to the mask mandate without any issues, there have been some problems where businesses are faced with some unpleasant customers with being told to comply to Erie County's mandate.
"The implementation has been very exhausting for our staff due to the fact that so many of our guests are against the mandate, just their right to not have to wear a mask. It has been very difficult for our staff to be the one to police it," said Paul Santora - Owner of Santora's Pizza Pub and Grill restaurants. "People have gotten vulgar and very insultive to some of our staff to the point where Wednesday night, we had a 17-year-old girl who works up front actually tell us that she had to leave and she couldn't do it anymore."
With the possibility of incidents like this happening, Duell said that Duff's is doing all they can to comply with the county's mandates without engaging with customers who may not be wearing their masks and doing their part.
"We do have a sign up at the front that says, 'Erie County Department of Health mandates a mask to enter.' We ask people to comply with that, but we will not place my employees in conflict," Duell said. "It just creates a very difficult situation for them. Not to mention the fact that a lot of these people that are coming in from either out of town, especially over the holiday weekend, and they might even be coming from the neighboring county just three or four miles up the road, where there are no restrictions."
With the problems he has already experienced at his restaurant, Santora is of the mindset that it should not be up to the restaurants and their staff to have to police the people coming in to comply with the county's mask mandate.
"We're in a situation right now where it's very difficult for society to be able to accept what's happening again," Santora said. "I still don't think we should be responsible to be the ones to mandate these situations. They should leave it to the public, so if there's issues, they should go after the people that don't want to wear masks, not the ones that are having an impossible struggle at trying to do it."
"I mean, you get one guest that gets up and goes to the bathroom and we don't police that and somebody walks in or somebody complains that somebody got up and then all of the sudden we're responsible for that and we get hit with fines and so on and so forth, I just don't see that the way to be society constitutionally that we're responsible for that."
Perhaps some of the biggest frustrations with the mandates in restaurants is the lack of evidence from the county, or anywhere, that COVID-19 is being transmitted as a direct result of the restaurants. Because of this, Duell believes there are other solutions that local leadership should be exploring.
"There is no evidence that shows that spread is occurring in our businesses," Duell said. "They don't have the contact tracing information. If there is, please put it forward. This would be very easy for a lot of people to say, 'Geez, OK, yeah. We do need to make some accommodations here.' But there just hasn't been. There isn't any evidence that shows it. Our businesses are safe. The spread is occurring at home. It has been that way since Day 1."
So what happens if when Dec. 13 comes around, Erie County elects to implement Phase 2 of their system in an attempt to lower the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalization? What happens if the decision is for restaurants and other businesses to comply with vaccine mandates?
"We will not agree with the vaccination process," Santora said. "How could an individual restaurant or a 17-year-old girl verify that somebody's had their vaccine and have us be responsible to let that person in based on 100% vaccination rate, on top of that fact that our diminishing staff and how much difficulty we're having, and then having to mandate our staff to be here and vaccinated? I've talked to a few people, and being that fact and how many employees are in that situation, you're going to wind up with a couple of these people closing."
As for Duell and his staff at Duff's, they will not stand for what Phase 2 will mean for businesses all across Erie County, especially in the restaurant business.
"We did not get into this business to divide people," Duell said. "We got into this business to bring people together through food and drink, and for other industries, you know, maybe health or fitness, or beauty or style, whatever the case might be. But when they're asking when our leaders, and one person no less - not our legislature, but one person [being] our county executive - is telling us to discriminate at the doors of our business, it's just not something I'm going to take lying down. I think we need to be proactive here and not reactive to Phase 2."
So what is the hope for what's to come for these restaurants going into the Dec. 13 decision by Erie County? For Duell, he's hoping for common sense to prevail.
"I think there are some politicians out there that seem to be taking some aim at restoring some semblance of balance of power here, but I also think that the county executive - who I do believe is a good person, I don't think know him - I think he's trying to the best he possibly can do. But I think a reflection and a course correction maybe is required," Duell said.
Santora is also of the similar mindset as Duell, hoping that the county will release the mandate and make it the people's right to choose whether they wear a mask or not in public.
"People are angry out there that we're in this situation and that we're against the situation of the mandate and we don't understand what's going on, which is 100% not true. We're totally under the understanding of what's happening," Santora said. "We understand there's people sick, but what we do understand as well is that we're hanging on a thread. We're very short-staffed to begin with, and then on top of that the cost of goods that have gone up. We've spent all summer just trying to recover just a little bit, and this is really going to put the nail in the coffin for quite a lot of people, because if it gets any worse or there's a mandate any further than this, a lot of these places are going to close."
"We're not political. We're not trying to go by a specific agenda. We're not far-left, we're not far-right. We're none of those things. All we're trying to do is make people understand that we're struggling with this mask mandate. It's a very difficult thing for us to continue doing business successfully, and if you want to the culture of Western New York to collapse, which is the restaurant industry... that's what you're going to have. You will have a select group of people who make it, and a select group that don't, and that's sad."
What about another local business being affected by the mask mandate in Erie County? How have they been able to get a grip of the mandate with their customers?
For Ashley Draper - Owner of Jada Blitz Fitness in Williamsville - she's doing everything she can to oblige by the mandate, even though she is not in agreeance with it.
"It's very challenging, and it puts our employees and our staff in a hard place to have to police mask again, because the public - especially people who are into their health and workout - are, quite frankly, fed up with it," Draper said. "It's hard for us to have to ask our staff to walk around and ask people to make sure they have their mask on or make sure their mask is put on their face properly. It's just very frustrating that we're back in this spot again. It's just exhausting."
Where Draper and her staff, as well as her patrons, are frustrated is the feeling that they are back at square one with where they were at the start of the pandemic.
"We're going into, what could be, our busiest time of the year, and should be our busiest time of the year, and the overreaching of the local county executive and the health department really hurts small business in particular," Draper said.
But what if the county implements Phase 2 of its mandates to require proof of vaccination? Like Duell's approach to the mandate, Draper sees it as unfair discrimination.
"I feel like it would be forcing businesses to segregate," Draper explained. "Never in history would we have had to do something like this, and if it was any other case or scenario, imagine the backlash a business would get for having to make the decision to segregate based on someone's freedom of choice and medical decisions."
Also similar to Duell, Draper believes that if the county had proper proof that businesses like restaurants, gyms, beauty salons and more were the source of COVID-19 transmission, businesses would be more understanding of the mandates in place. However, when the data continues to be held from these businesses, she says it's overbearing.
In the end, Draper is hopeful that changes to the mandate will come sooner rather than later. In the meantime, she's asking people to continue to be understanding of the situation businesses like hers, and many in Erie County, are being put in.
"The enforcing of these mandates is something that a lot of businesses don't want to do, but they don't know what else to do," Draper said. Hopefully this will change, and hopefully more people step up and start fighting for their rights and for their freedom, and hopefully we see things change a bit for us."
