Waterloo Region, municipalities extend closure of facilities through May

Waterloo Region and its municipalities have extended the closure of municipal administrative and operations facilities through May.

In their announcement, officials say the extension is consistent with the framework for reopening the province which was released by the Ontario government on Monday.

It also puts the region and municipalities in line with the potential reopening of publicly-funded schools, which will also not reopen until May 31 at the earliest.

The region’s CAO Mike Murray said that municipal decisionmakers took a closer look at the provincial announcement before it made the move.

“If you look at that carefully, that framework really describes a slow and gradual plan for reopening Ontario,” he explained.

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He says the province will check a number of boxes before the reopening begins including a consistent two- to four-week decrease in the number of daily COVID-19 cases, a decrease in the rate of cases that cannot be traced to a source, a decrease in the number of new cases in hospital, and the ability for public health officials to reach approximately 90 per cent of new COVID-19 contacts within one day.

“I would say probably few if any of those conditions are currently mapped,” Murray explained. “So that says to us, it’s going to be a little while before those conditions are met.”

He said that once those items are crossed from the list, it will still be a gradual three-stage process before the three-stage opening gets underway.

“Once they start to reopen in a sequential way, it’s going to be two-to-four weeks per stage,” he explained. “All that said to us is, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to open to the public much before May 31.”

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Local area municipalities (aside from the region) had already announced closures of some facilities until the end of June.

”That included parks, recreation facilities, municipal libraries, things that needed a very long lead time to notify users and also need long lead time for reopening,” Murray said.

He says that if the province gets the ball rolling early than anticipated, the region and area municipalities will consider revising the plan.