Business leaders: Open up the salons

Orange hairdressers call on the governor to revisit their exclusion

Business leaders on Orange County’s Economic Recovery Task Force said Gov. Ron DeSantis got one thing wrong: excluding salons and barbershops from reopening at a diminished capacity Monday, along with restaurants and stores.

“I was disappointed there was no hope given to them,” said Chuck Whittall, a leader of the county group developing guidelines for businesses to reopen. “I know a lot of those businesses are having a very, very, hard time.”

The governor announced the first phase of his plan to restart the state’s economy on Wednesday, but did not offer a clear timeline for how long the phase would last and what business owners could expect beyond that.

The Orange group expressed

frustration on Thursday morning with the lack of communication with DeSantis, who held a press conference in Orlando on Sunday, but did not invite either Orange Mayor Jerry Demings or Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.

Whittall and others in the group co-led by John Henry, a barber, said they would like to talk directly with DeSantis to discuss the ways barber and hair stylists could open safely on Monday along with other stores.

“I had his attention all the time during the election,” said Whittall, president of Unicorp National Developments. “But now that we really need to talk to him, how do we go about getting an audience with him and get him on one of these [video-conferencing] screens up here so we can express our concerns to him. I think we carry significant weight for the state of Florida…”

Henry said some smallbusiness owners may not be able to last another few weeks to a month if they must wait that long to finally reopen.

In the backdrop of the practical concerns over reigniting Central Florida’s once-booming tourism economy — going into the coronavirus pandemic Orlando was the most-visited city in the nation — is a tangled political backstory.

Demings’ wife, U.S. Rep. Val Demings, served as a manager in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, who is a close political ally of DeSantis. The Republican governor flew to Washington, D.C. to appear in the Oval Office with Trump on the day before DeSantis announced his reopening plan for Florida.

Demings along with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, both Democrats, have both said at public briefings that neither of them has heard directly from DeSantis during the pandemic despite Orlando making up a significant portion of the state’s economy.

DeSantis’ order appears to leave much of the details of how counties will reopen up to the local governments.

At a news conference following the meeting, Demings didn’t say whether he would like to see barbers and other salons open sooner.

“I remain open on that,” Demings said.

The mayor said he spoke Thursday morning with Henry, owner of J Henry’s Barber Shop on Church Street, and heard the concerns of other salon owners.

“As a small business owner, they’re certainly struggling,” he said.

He said the group aims to draft guidelines based on recommendations from health advisers to protect patrons of those businesses from the spread of the virus.

Orange is pushing ahead to form a set of guidelines to help businesses get started again without compromising public health.

George Aguel, president of Visit Orlando, urged the working group to remember tourists and convention planners will want to understand the health and safety measures practiced here so that they can feel safe visiting once again.

“Not just at the Convention Center, but hotels, restaurants and every small business that might be touched by a delegate or a tourist,” he said.

For example, doctors from Orlando’s two major hospital systems disagreed on Wednesday over whether businesses should conduct universal temperature screenings of both customers and employees. But at Thursday’s meeting there appeared to be broader agreement that universal temperature screenings should not be required.

“Although they have a role, from our perspective, it may be a little bit impractical,” said Dr. Raul Pino, director of the state Health Department office in Orange County.

Dr. George Ralls of Orlando Health also questioned the practicality of the measure.

“It may also not be as necessary in the scenarios where we have responsible patrons and business owners doing the other things like social-distancing, masking and very diligent hand-washing,” he said.

Those “other things” mirror rules adopted by other states.

Those proposals, outlined by Whittall, include:

1. Maintain social-distancing of six feet or more between staff and patrons.

2. Employees should stay at home if sick.

3. Everyone should wear face-coverings, preferably a mask.

4. Health-screen all employees before they begin working.

5. Anyone with a temperature greater than 100 degrees should not be permitted to work.

6. Sanitize surfaces and hand-wash frequently.

7. High-risk persons should work from home.

The other subcommittees met throughout Thursday, aiming to have recommendations to present to Demings and the overall task force by Friday afternoon. Members have maintained that developing and maintaining consumer confidence will be critical for the economy to rebound.

In an afternoon group tasked with devising strategies to bring back tourism, a Wyndham Destinations representative suggested that some travelers are ready to vacation, and are calling now looking for timeshares within their network.