Anchorage mayor announces four-stage plan to start reopening city's businesses

For the first time since he issued ‘hunker down’ orders more than a month ago, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz did not mention ‘flattening the curve,’ but did talk about opening Anchorage up to business.

Unveiling a four-stage plan that could start as soon as the Cinco de Mayo expiration of the current hunker down orders, but likely take a year or longer to complete, Berkowitz, joined by three other city officials, urged cautious optimism.

“We walked together through the valley of the shadow of death — seen it all around us; felt the virus all around us and we’re trying today to describe the path ahead,” Berkowitz said. “It’s critical that the entire process be driven by metrics… that the decisions we make about how many restrictions we have are dependent on numbers we can all track and relate to.”

The city’s plan, which was to be unveiled at Monday at noon — the regular time of the Mayor’s thrice-weekly fireside chats — but pushed to 4 p.m. so that state and city officials could iron out the few differences in their otherwise similar plans, begins with moving out of hunker down, into phase 1 of normalization, called ‘Easing.’

Easing, according to documents provided just before the meeting, includes new allowable activities: Partially reopen low-risk, non-critical businesses with appropriate safety measures from “Anchorage Opens” Risk Assessment, such as strict physical distancing, frequent cleaning practices and other preventative measures.

Encourage alternate delivery methods for goods (e.g. curbside pickup, to-go), and limited or no contact between employees and customers.

Ex: Restaurants with appropriate physical distancing, staff PPE, frequent cleaning and other preventative measures such as fewer tables, increased spacing between customers, etc.

Ex: Personal Care Services with appropriate physical distancing, appointment-only, 1-on-1 services, etc.

Ex: non-public facing businesses institute distancing measures, limit gathering of employees, require face coverings, and protections for vulnerable workers, etc.

Ex: public-facing businesses institute distancing measures, alternate pickup/delivery methods, require face coverings, and limit occupancy, etc.

Some non-emergency or non-urgent medical procedures can proceed.

Low-risk outdoor recreation activities are allowed.

Of note, phase 1 includes only restaurants, not stand-alone bars, which would be part of phase 2 easing, labeled ‘Recovery.’

Phase 2, according to the plan, can only be implemented after Covid-19 cases “trend downwards for an extended period: initially 28 days, but will continue working with public health experts to identify any changes needed to this extended period.”

Asked when Anchorage might be ready to move from ‘Hunker Down’ to ‘Easing’, the Mayor said ‘the question shouldn’t be when, but what?’

“If we open up too fast or too soon or too much, we sacrifice all the gains,” Berkowitz said. “The history is clear that cities that are disciplined in their response to pandemics, they come back, economically, faster than cities that didn’t. I understand how stressful this is. I know the urgency of getting back to business as usually, but that’s not going to happen for a good, long period of time.”