Rivera Pushes Bar COVID-19 Enforcement

I have to give credit where credit is due. Last week I wrote about how council was failing the community by not pushing enforcement of the COVID-19 rules for bars. 

Several bars decided to re-open during the pandemic (bars are currently prohibited from opening) as restaurants in order to start getting revenue going. Obviously some just became a restaurant so that they could open as a bar again and weren't taking the rules seriously.Around the same time, we saw aspike in virus cases in El Paso. It was very obviously causing a threat to public health because you had some bars that were essentially operating as business as usual. No social distancing, no masks, full capacity, people sitting at bars, no one ordering food, etc. 

Meanwhile, there were bars and grills that were trying to be responsible business owners and members of the community doing everything they could to comply with the rules. And what you had was an unlevel playing field between the unscrupulous establishments and the ones trying to do the right thing. 

I found a ton of violations in a lot of places around the Eastside. The most egregious I found was at an establishment on the Eastside that actually happens to be in the same city council district I live in. So I naturally raised the issue with my city representative Claudia Rodriguez. Rodriguez has dropped the ball on other issues I have raised to her attention, a problem I never had under now State Rep-Elect Claudia Ordaz Perez, but I still respected her office and raised the issue with her office. 

She. Blew. Me. Off. 

There is not nice way to put it. Should couldn't care less. She sent me some condescending message and then punted saying that there was basically nothing the city could do about the issue. 

I knew she was full of shit. I don't know why some elected officials do that. 

So I wrote my blog post. Turns out, I wasn't the only constituent that had an issue with neighborhood bars that were clearly violating the rules. 

City Representative Henry Rivera spearheaded the enforcement issue and as a result a few establishments were found to be in violation and action was taken. Thats a good thing for the community because it prevents the spread of the virus and also forces the businesses to act more responsibly when it comes to public health - thus allowing the economy to get going again by allowing the responsible establishments to remain open and giving the substandard establishments the ability to get up to code so that they can open once they are in compliance. 

This is how the system is supposed to work. 

The fact that Claudia Rodriguez is a Trump supporter (she is anticipating a Trump reelection and already booked tickets to the inauguration) is something that I think is leaking into local policy. She's displays absolutely no urgency in enforcement of rules to help prevent the spread of the virus primarily due to her world view. 

And our community will suffer because of it.