In December, the City of Highland Park voted to force dine-in restaurants to ask for a vaccine card as a pre-requisite for sitting down and dining in.
 
City of Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering was quoted in the press saying, “the order was intended to solely mitigate the current spike in infections.” Unfortunately, there is no data that supports her order. This is because there is zero correlation between asking for a vax card and stemming the spread of Covid-19. The fact is that Omicron is spreading among those who have been vaccinated and boosted. People who are vaccinated can be asymptomatic and still spread the disease. Both the unvaccinated and the vaccinated can spread Covid-19.  
 
The other rationale for this order is that it will discourage the unvaccinated from spreading the disease and will somehow encourage those who remain unvaccinated to get vaccinated. This is not the job of local restaurants. A restaurant’s job is to provide a sanitary environment, not to police the health of its patrons. The ability to encourage vaccination resides with federal, state and county public health entities. It does not reside with local municipalities or with restauranteurs.
 
The 3rd argument being used to validate this type of overreach is that it’s not “onerous” to make local restaurants ask for it. Or that’s at least how City of Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering put it after her experience while on vacation in Hawaii, in a let them eat cake moment that has nothing to do with the restaurants responsible for complying with it. Regardless, it's not a question of whether it’s onerous or not, it’s a matter of whether the order is an effective policy in how it serves the hardworking, taxpaying residents of Highland Park.  
 
Here too, it falls short, because it’s an inherently divisive order. Good governance should bring businesses and residents together, not pit them against one another. Things in this country are divisive enough. Encouraging residents to report a violation to the city manager at City Hall so that a fine can be levied against the restaurant is asking residents to do the bidding that rightly belongs to the City. Perhaps we should have Mayor Rotering, the City Council (with the exception of Andres Tapia), and City Manager Ghida Neukirch who recommended this approach to civic engagement check for vax cards in Highland Park restaurants instead. Let them serve as the health police around town. Afterall, it’s not onerous to do.
 
Covid is a fast-moving virus. Knee-jerk local municipal overreach is not the solution. Restaurants need our support in a very real way. In the past two years they have been swimming upstream to keep their doors open. To go mobile. To do curbside pick-up. Now they’re dealing with staffing shortages, spikes in the cost of food and with shortages in the supply chain. Making them the healthcare police is not something they should be dealing with. It’s not their job. It will send patrons to other restaurants where the card isn’t required. It won’t stop the spread of disease. And it pits residents against local businesses.
 
We need local governance that recognizes its limitations, not politically motivated edicts by the Mayor and the Council that are ineffective in stopping the spread of disease.
 
It’s time to send a signal to the Mayor and the City Council – rescind the order - so we can show we are a community that embraces and supports local establishments.