A group of 17 Snohomish County mayors have sent a letter to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, asking the governor for “more detail and a more concrete understanding of a timeline, even if provisional,” for re-opening the state.

The letter, sent April 24, thanked the governor for his leadership “during this unprecedented time in our state’s history,” and for his “early, decisive actions” to save millions of lives statewide.

“We remain committed to working with you to ensure the health and well-being of our communities, large and small, rural and urban,” the mayors said.

However, those signing the letter added they are becoming “increasingly concerned about our residents’ rising frustration with the uncertainly surrounding plans to re-open our places of business, recreation and worship.”

“We’re working on plans for recovery in our respective cities and as a region and wish for these plans to reflect alignment with the statewide framework,” the mayors said. “Greater transparency would help inform the development of local strategies and guidelines for the recovery phase of this pandemic. We believe our local strategies will be critical for keeping our residents safe and guiding their return to work, recreation, and a full life.”

Among the South Snohomish County mayors signing the letter were those from Bothell, Brier, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Mukilteo and Woodway. Missing on the list of signees was Edmonds Mayor Mike Nelson.

“I respect the other mayors and the challenges their cities are experiencing,” Nelson said. “Almost 25% of Edmonds residents are in the higher risk category for this virus. Protecting the health of our community and saving lives is my number one priority.”

Nelson said the letter “was generated to put pressure on Gov. Inslee to reopen certain sectors sooner by telling him that without a more detailed plan and timeline the public will stop complying with the stay-at-home order. I believe setting an arbitrary timeline that can be easily modified gives false hope when the medical community has said there is still too much uncertainty.”

“Of course we all want these sectors to reopen as soon as possible,” Nelson continued. “But this decision needs to be driven by public health and medical data to support it if we want our community to truly recover.”

Here’s the full text of the mayors’ letter:

April 24, 2020 

The Honorable Governor Jay Inslee 
Governor of Washington Sate 
416 14th Ave SW, 
Olympia, WA 98504 

From: Cities of Snohomish County Washington 

Dear Governor Inslee, 

Thank you for your leadership during this unprecedented time in our state’s history. Your early, decisive actions continue to protect the lives of millions of Washington’s residents. We remain committed to working with you to ensure the health and well-being of our communities, large and small, rural and urban. 

We are tremendously proud of the resiliency that Snohomish County communities are demonstrating and our collective success in slowing the spread of COVID-19. However, we’re becoming increasingly concerned about our residents’ rising frustration with the uncertainty surrounding plans to re-open our places of business, recreation, and worship. We appreciated your news conference on April 21st, where you shared your outline for a plan to focus on these very issues. The outline contained steps that seemed appropriate to us, but our own planning would benefit from more detail and a more concrete understanding of a timeline, even if provisional. We’re working on plans for recovery in our respective cities and as a region and wish for these plans to reflect alignment with the statewide framework. Greater transparency would help inform the development of local strategies and guidelines for the recovery phase of this pandemic. We believe our local strategies will be critical for keeping our residents safe and guiding their return to work, recreation, and a full life. 

We would like to offer our assistance in building out the state’s recovery plan. 

Areas where we believe we can assist you and your team in developing a more detailed plan include: 

1. Outlining the conditions under which each and all economic sectors can begin to return to safe operations. 

2. Outlining the conditions under which people can recreate, particularly outdoor recreation. 

3. Outlining the conditions under which people can gather to worship and pray. 

We certainly understand the very difficult position that you are in trying to address the simultaneous health and economic crises in our state, and we share your priority of ensuring that we do not see a resurgence of this virus as we re-open. We are also becoming increasingly aware of the very real and tragic circumstances many of our small business owners, workers, and residents face. We’re hearing daily about people struggling to pay their mortgage or rent; struggling to keep food on the table; struggling to keep their business afloat. As local elected leaders, we owe it to our community to be able to communicate to them a transparent and realistic plan that will give some hope to their ability to survive economically in the wake of this pandemic. Your leadership is essential to our ability to do this. 

Providing a strategy with good-faith estimates, and modifying it as changes are needed, allows us as residents and as representatives for our shared constituencies a path forward to recovery — not just for our economy, but also for the health and safety of our communities. We share a very real concern that without hope and an understanding of what happens next, we’ll experience widespread non-compliance in our communities, undoing all the great progress we’ve accomplished thus far. We know that you are working hard to demonstrate leadership to that end, and we want you to know we stand beside you in that fight. 

Your decision to put strong measures in place has proven to be effective in battling COVID-19, and we collectively owe you a debt of gratitude. Please let us know how we can continue to be of assistance to you and your office as we take the next steps in this generational challenge. Millions count on our actions over the next few weeks. 

Respectfully,