By Blake Haas
BLOOMINGTON – With McLean County’s rolling positivity rate over 8%, Bloomington’s top elected official says a closed-door meeting on Tuesday with local school and county leaders discussed how to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Speaking with WJBC’s Scott Miller, Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner said if new mitigation’s, such as a mask mandate, are proposed, they would be in ordinance with Bloomington and Normal.
“There were a lot of things that were discussed and thrown out. I don’t think in terms of how quickly we move; we certainly can act at the next city council meeting. We could certainly have a special city council meeting. I have yet to have any member of the council ask for me to call a special city council meeting before then (September 8th).”
Those present at the meeting were representatives from Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, the McLean County Health Department, the Town of Normal, and the City of Bloomington.
“We’ve got a couple of establishments who have allowed in bars an excess of any kind of decent social distancing. You’ve got 75 or 100 people pack tightly together as I have said that’s just not responsible.”
“I want to apologize and pledge to do better. This is not acceptable practice in light of our recent COVID spikes. Let’s all try to work together to ensure better practices across the board throughout this pandemic,” Renner said on social media.
So far, 353 Illinois State University students have tested positive for the novel Coronavirus with 1,236 total county cases.
Blake Haas can be reached [email protected].
