The Cascade County City-County Board of Health called an emergency meeting at 7 p.m. March 17 to discuss options to restricting bars and restaurants related to the COVID-19 pandemic. On Monday, the health department had said it was not ordering closures at this time.
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Initially, some board members advocated to restrict bars and restaurants to delivery or to go orders to limit public interaction, but some board members expressed concern with the economic fallout.
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Several other Montana counties have taken action to restrict bars, restaurants, casinos, gyms, fitness facilities, breweries and other public gathering places.

Flathead County has taken a similar tact to Cascade County and strongly recommended social distancing and staying home when sick, as well as other precautions, but has not called for the closure of bars or restaurants.
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Cascade County does not yet have any positive cases of COVID-19, but officials anticipate that will eventually change.

Trisha Gardner, health officer at Cascade County City-County Health Department, said the county has sent test samples daily to the state lab and the guidance now from the state is that the lab is so overwhelmed they may not report back negative cases, but only report back any positive cases. Commercial labs are also testing samples now as well, but testing capabilities remain limited among local health providers, CCHD and Board of Health officials said.
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So far, the governor’s office has sent releases for each positive case.

Dr. Ray Geyer, an infectious disease physician at Great Falls Clinic and a board of health member, said that in the case of COVID-19, it’s hard to predict its behavior and spread patters other than it spreads quickly.

“We’re writing the story day to day,” Geyer said by phone during the meeting.
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With positive cases, it won’t take long to overwhelm the local medical community or the public health system, officials said. CCHD submitted a request on March 17 to the state for medical supplies, including the N95 mask required to take swabs from patients with suspected cases of COVID-19 or other viruses.

A number of local bar and restaurant owners attended the meeting and expressed concern with the economic impact of closing their establishments and the vagueness of what carry-out actually meant.
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By the end of the meeting, the consensus was that CCHD would distribute more information on cleaning and disinfection measures to mitigate the spread and other recommendations.

The board and business owners also discussed the impact to the community’s mental and emotional well being if they didn’t have a place to go and see other people, even while cutting down on those outings and following the precautionary measures.

The bar and restaurant owners offered to develop a proposal for specifics of what going to delivery, drive-through or carry out only would look like.
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Scott Reasoner, an owner of several downtown establishments and board president of the Great Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, said that he’s been in touch with fellow bar and restaurant owners in cities that have enacted restrictions and the broadness and vagueness of the health department order is causing problems because everyone is implementing it differently.
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At the beginning of the meeting, Geyer said he recommended restricting bars and restaurants to limit the spread, but after listening to business owners explain the mitigation and cleaning measures they’ve already implemented and the significant reduction is customer traffic already, he said for now, it wasn’t reasonable to further restrict bars and restaurants.
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The consensus was as soon as there’s a positive case in Cascade County, the board would reconvene and go to a delivery, takeout model using input from the downtown business owners and the Tavern Association.

Superintendent Tom Moore said that he wondered what the next step would be if they close bars and restaurants since some people can’t find food necessities in grocery stores or couldn’t prepare their own meals.
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He said having just experienced having massive closures thrust upon schools with limited notice, it caused chaos, so agreed with giving the bar and restaurant owners some time to implement delivery and carry out plans and to develop more specific guidance for business owners on what that entails.

Tara Tronson of 5th and Wine detailed some of the measures they’ve taken to clean and disinfect their shop and also how they’re spacing customers further apart. She said that foot traffic has been very low already since many people are staying home and staff is staying home if they have a cough, fever or any symptoms.

“We’re in danger of possibly going out of business because of this closure,” Tronson said. “We’re already hurting, people aren’t coming in anyway.”

She said they want the community to be safe and offered to work with CCHD to share information with other bars and restaurants and implement more mitigation measures. Tronson asked the board for some time to implement an online ordering system and carry-out options.

“We’re all taking this very seriously,” she said.

Delivery is cost prohibitive for most of the bars and restaurants who spoke during the March 17 meeting because of the additional insurance costs.

Sandra Thares, owner of the O’Haire Motor Inn and Sip n’ Dip, said she will have to lay off 27 people she has to close their bar and restrict to delivery and takeout.

Around 5:30 p.m. March 17, Gov. Steve Bullock announced emergency rules to make unemployment benefits accessible to workers laid off due to COVID-19 and waive the typical one week waiting period before receiving benefits.

Thares said they want to keep the community safe, but small local business won’t survive closures.

“Nothing means more to us than the work families we have created, but give us a chance to survive,” Thares said.

She said Great Falls tourism saw a 97 percent decline this week and her hotel was nearly empty last night.

Thares said Piano Pat is tucked away for the next three months and the mermaids have been furloughed and they’re creating space between customers.

“For you to vote to close the bars, it’s going to be an immeasurable income to some of these small establishments that they’re not going to come back from,” Thares said.

Seth Swingly, owner of Mighty Mo Brew Pub, said a to-go model helps somewhat but for places like his, alcoholic drinks are where they make their margins and food sales don’t bring in enough revenue to cover costs.

Thad Reiste of Electric City Coffee said that the impact so far has cut their staff from 15 to seven and sales are 50 percent of what they normally are.

“It’s already a significant impact,” he said.

Joe Anderegg of Elevation 3330 said they don’t offer much food, so restrictions on their bar would be a significant blow to a business that hasn’t yet hit the one-year mark.

Hearing about the reduction in traffic at bars and restaurants, Geyer said that is appeared the public was getting the message about staying home and avoiding large gatherings.

Terry Barber, chair of health board, said he was not at all in favor of shutting down bars and restaurants.

By the end of the meeting, Geyer said “it’s untenable” to restrict bars and restaurants at this point, but once there’s a positive case in the county, he said they’d have to revisit the issue.

“It doesn’t seem reasonable at this point, Everybody agrees business as usual can’t happen and they’re already doing that,” he said.

Geyer said he was satisfied by what he heard from business owners during the meeting that they were doing what needed to be done.

The board asked CCHD staff to develop guidelines for what carry-out would look like and staff said it would likely take until next week since they’re swamped.

The bar and restaurant owners offered to develop a proposal to present to CCHD and the board by March 18.

“I cannot give my appreciation enough for your willingness to do that,” Gardner said.