Wine Country Times

Sonoma County is now in the red tier within California’s four-tier, color-coded Blueprint for a Safer Economy. 

The New Blueprint tier assignments were assigned on March, 14.

Peter Rumble, president of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce, spoke with KSRO about businesses reopening among the new restrictions and guidelines.

“There was a lot of work going into that in order to make sure that everyone was well informed and prepared for it,” Rumble said. “A lot of great things in the recovery plan that were just adopted, including making a lot of the expenses that businesses are undertaking tax deductible, etc.”

According to the Economy Blueprint’s website, counties must meet the next tiers criteria for two consecutive weeks in order to be able to move to a less restrictive tier. Counties whose metrics worsen over two consecutive weeks are assigned to a more restrictive tier. 

“We need to maintain our trajectory into less restrictive tiers, from red to orange and so on, to begin to expand the capacity,” Rumble said. “For everybody across our community, let's maintain our precautions, our masks, our social distance, our sanitation and hand washing so that we can continue to move into a less restrictive tier.”

With the new guidelines, businesses are expected to be in need of resources in order to maintain profits within the new tier. Another hurdle among the new restrictions is the ability of local businesses to bring in customers. 

“They need customers, frankly. We’ve been pounding this message since the beginning, over a year now, to shop local,” Rumble said. “Now more than ever, it's important to support your local restaurant, your local retailer. They really need people to continue to do that, to the extent that they can.”

California’s color-coded Blueprint features four levels, or colors: Purple, red, orange and yellow, with purple being the most restrictive tier. 

Sonoma County’s red tier status means that the county is below 8.1% positive tests.