Any Nashville business owners who don’t obey the city’s new COVID-19 guidelines risk losing their permits to operate, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said at a press conference Monday.
Cooper, preaching safety first, said the community must respond to business owners who flagrantly violate the rules.
“Should a venue persistently not try to keep its customers or staff safe, should that happen after lots of education, then, of course, it is the right of the public health department to pull all of its permits allowing it to operate as a public business. People have a right to be safe and not just safe at home. They need to be safe when they go outside. People have worked very very very hard in this town to limit the spread of the virus, and we have to honor that work. We have to value it. We have to reinforce it,” Cooper said.
“We will encourage people not to patronize. Public notice can be involved with people understanding that they’re not going to be safe in a particular spot and that the ownership is not valuing customers, is not valuing the citizens in Nashville and all their efforts. We are in a situation together. We can, as neighbors, make it work and it’s inappropriate for one party to endanger the rest of us or more of us into the lazy, frankly, and not protecting its staff and its customers and from that laziness.”
Cooper went on to compare his guidelines to seat belt laws that keep people safe.
“Well, this is a lot bigger than seat belts, frankly,” Cooper said.
As The Tennessee Star reported last week, Nashville business owners better comply with all of Cooper’s safety rules, or else police might pay them a visit. As of Monday, Nashville moved to Phase One of Cooper’s plan to reopen the city’s economy, at least partially.
As The Star reported last month, Cooper issued a four-phased plan to reopen Nashville’s economy.
According to ASafeNashville.org, for each of the four phases Nashville is in, city officials will only advance to the next phase if the area meets one of two benchmarks. The website said either the number of COVID-19 cases in Davidson County must remain stable or the number must decline over a 14-day period.
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
As much as I want to complain about the current leadership, which I didn’t vote for, it scares me more that people that keep re-electing them. (“Pander” does not refer to a bear-like creature from China.)
It also scares me to hear about over 200 reports to the police about “non-compliant businesses”. New York’s “snitch line” got filled with profane, obscene, and just plain nasty versions of “Hell no, we won’t snitch!” I’d have expected us to do better, with more class.
If the citizens, and illegal aliens, of this city continue with these adolescent choices, they deserve the ghetto this town will become. I have complained of the transients bringing the “SH” to our “It City”, but more recently it seems to me it was already here!
This mayor has to go. These Democrats are cracking me up. How much booze is served downtown? And he has the audacity to talk about “safety”. I have been a nurse for over 22 years. I am here to tell you this is all a hoax. I may run for Congress myself. This is getting absurd. Americans are some of the dumbest people in the face of the earth. Wash your hands and go back to work you morons.
Board up your businesses folks. The surrounding counties will be glad to take you in. You would have thought Metro would have learned it’s lesson with all of the shopping centers moving out of the county over the past decade but they didn’t. Metro has been on it’s way to becoming another Democrat rat hole since the Bredesen administration…bloated budgets, sweetheart tax deals to businesses, rampant crime, failing schools and the constant fleecing of home owners via property taxes.. Now they’ve completed the fall with their leftist totalitarianism. Glad we relocated 8 years ago when we saw the fall coming.
Democrats are going to destroy Nashville. It is such a shame but citizens keep voting them in. It is up to the people to vote for someone that doesn’t tax and spend. He lied completely, said he was a fiscal conservative. I have never heard of a fiscal conservative that would change the rules of “open for business On Friday May 9” then extend it 2 days before Mother’s Day so his citizens would go to the next county to spend their money at restaurants. That’s just plain dumb. We have had his brother Jim Cooper forever in the 5th district. Claims to be a blue dog, no such thing anymore and he is 100% a liberal spender. Loves spending your money. Democrat run cities just don’t survive and Nashville is heading towards a Detroit at a fast rate of speed. Mayor Cooper needs to be called out by the citizens. He will get his property tax increase (certainly not 32+%) but the Nashville council always sucks up to the Mayor. Can’t get much more liberal then they are. Like I said the “It City“ is doomed.
Good grief. Cooper has shredded the Constitution. Metro King! We have returned to the days of old…King George is back!
Typical Dem-run city. Drive all your businesses out of town. Who do they think pay the taxes?
If it’s a “guideline”, how can the state governments treat it like a law?
NO elected official or judge or law enforcement officer has the right to stop ANY American citizen from being able to work or leave their home.
They can SUGGEST a stay at home strategy, but mandating it is a crime. It is a direct violation of Amendment 14, Section 1 of the Bill of Rights which states “Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Preventing people from working, deciding who is “essential” and who is not is also a violation of the Constitution as is preventing them from going to church and worshiping as they see fit (as defined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights).
EVERY elected official, judge or LEO who violates the U.S. Constitution MUST be removed from office and never allowed to hold a position of authority ever again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Cooper is a disgrace! He needs to be one (term) and done! And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of his brother, Congressman Jim Cooper too! The Cooper family has already done enough damage to Nashville and Tennessee.
Take this power hungry jerk to court. Cooper is crazy. Enough of his mouth and threats are enough. He has a severe case of Napoleon complex.