Collier County commissioners shoot down stay at home order

Collier County Government Center

Collier County Commissioners elected not to instate a stay at home order.

Following reluctance from Lee County and hearing angry citizens voice concerns, commissioners largely abandoned plans for a shelter order.

“But not coming back here to consider an order, in my opinion, depends upon everybody in Collier County taking responsibility and doing everything each one of us can to go by the social distancing requirements from the CDC,” said County Commissioner Andy Solis.

Collier County Commissioners met Friday for an emergency hearing and initially seemed poised for passage.

County Commissioner Burt Saunders earlier this week had been authorized to speak to officials in neighboring Lee County. And Saunders, the chair of the Collier board, seemed the most inclined to pass an ordinance. Calling in for the hearing remotely,

“I want to protect our health care system,” he said. “Not only the people suffering from COVID-19.”

Nevertheless, the voted with colleagues in a unanimous decision to indefinitely table an order and instead follow the lead of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The move came hours after the Department of Health reported 81 individuals have now tested positive for COVID-19.

The order would have closed non-essential businesses, encourages individuals to stay at home whenever possible, and discourages landlords from providing short-term rentals to people out of state.

“This is a general consensus of what people across the country are doing with stay at home ordinances,” said County Manager Jeffery Klatzkow.

No individual in Collier County has died from coronavirus infections. However, health officials in the hospital noted the pandemic has still stressed hospital resources. At one point, 80 employees at Naples Community Hospital ended up in quarantine.

About 50 remain under quarantine, according to hospital officials, but the number has gone down in large part because the hospital now has better protective protocols in place than when the coronavirus threat first emerged.

Still, the Collier County Medical Society voiced strong support for a stay at home order. Cesar De Leon, a past Society president, said the growing pandemic has the capacity to cripple the existing health care infrastructure in the country.

“We have no vaccine to prevent it, so more citizens will fall ill,” he said. “We do not have enough tests to know who is infected.”

But another contingency of the public voices strong concerns about limiting the freedom to leave their own homes.

State Rep. Byron Donalds, a Naples Republican and candidate for Congress, spoke to the board and said he understood the difficult decision in front of them. But despite a number of jurisdictions in Florida approving shelter orders, Donalds believes that’s government overreach beyond what the Commission can do by law.

“Such an order should come from the Governor,” Donalds said. “I believe you take this up without proper authority from the Legislature and Governor.”

Klatzkow conceded the issue of authority remains legally untested. The last time he can find record of this type of pandemic driving Florida decisions was in 1917, long before home rule was established for local governments.

Ideally, Klatzkow said, DeSantis would issue a statewide stay at home order and put consistent standards in place statewide.

Several Commissioners said they hold concerns what neighboring communities do, noting when Lee County closed its beaches, tourists flooded to open beaches in Collier instead.

Lee County Commissioners on Wednesday declined to take up a stay at home order. But they plan to reconvene on the issue on Monday.