Ellsworth County Health Department supervisor Kerianne Ehrlich and Keith Haberer, emergency management director for Ellsworth and Russell counties, will work on a plan this week to reopen Ellsworth County.

“It’s all going to be in phases,” Ehrlich said at Monday’s meeting of the county commissioners. “I would like to see as much open up as possible, still considering safety, and that we could potentially see a surge.”

Ehrlich said she will get more direction when she receives Gov. Laura Kelly’s plan.

Kelly’s statewide stay-at-home order ends Sunday, May 3.

Haberer said Kelly is going to make the announcement today (Thursday) that the state is starting to open up again.

“This is all pending that we don’t start spiking with more cases between now and Thursday (today),” he said. “So Thursday is when she is going to make the announcement and supposedly give us more of the framework that she wants to go by.”

Haberer said one of the subjects he and other emergency management directors have talked about with state emergency management officials has been restaurants and how they would be opened to the public.

He said instead of being limited to 10 customers in the restaurant at any one time, restaurants would be allowed 35 percent of their capacity.

“You would still have to do the social distancing,” Haberer said. “You’d still have to keep tables and everything six feet apart.”

He said if a restaurant only holds 30 people, it may not have enough room to meet the social distancing guidelines.

“But at least they’re (the state) giving them a little guideline to be open and not restricting it to 10 persons,” Haberer added.

Haberer said from what he is hearing at the state level, gatherings will still be limited to 10 people to start with and then increase from there.

“They haven’t really given us much information,” he said.

Commissioner Kermit Rush said he has heard a lot of complaints from barber and beauty shop owners concerning the need to reopen.

“I think we need to make sure that if they (barbers and beauty shops) have restrictions — a lot of those places can do a one person at a time thing,” Ehrlich said.

“And disinfect and clean in between customers,” Haberer added.

“It’s just making sure those places have the equipment that they need to do that and that they are prepared,” Ehrlich said.

“We have to accept a little personal responsibility,” Commissioner Dennis Rolfs said. “If I don’t want to go into Walmart because there are too many people in there, I’m not going to go into Walmart.”

Ehrlich said there will probably still be travel restrictions, such as to hot spots and out-of-state.

“Which I think is important because those places are still growing with numbers,” she said.

Ehrlich said her main concern is all the activities that could be potentially planned for this summer.

“Most of those activities are bringing in a lot of people from out-of-town,” she said. “You can’t manage the numbers coming in. Managing the hygiene is a concern. It kind of works all the way down to little kids sports.”

Ehrlich said her kids love baseball and they would be devastated if there were no baseball this summer.

“Everything could be back to normal by next summer,” she said.

Ehrlich said this summer is not going to be a normal summer.

“I think we have to take all the risks into hand because with so many of these things, you’re just not talking a few people getting together to do something,” she said. “You can’t control the crowd. You can’t manage the crowd. You can’t control hardly any of those things. That is a piece of the summer that we’re going to have to consider.”

“That’s what I was getting at about personal responsibility,” Rolfs said. “If you don’t want to go, don’t go.”

Ehrlich said there is always going to be two sides to every situation.

“That’s where we have to come in and try to find a balance of the two sides, and figure out the little things we can do to still help our economy, but for the overall health and wellness of our community, could we maybe giving up a few things right now knowing that hopefully by next summer we’d be back to our normal,” she said.

In other business:

• Andrew Bair, chief executive officer of the Ellsworth County Medical Center, said ECMC received its nearly $1.9 million Payroll Protection Program loan from the Small Business Administration.