Flagstaff mayor restricts many businesses to fight spread of new coronavirus. Tempe may give its mayor greater power too

Flagstaff Mayor Coral Evans issued a wide-reaching proclamation Monday night limiting dining at restaurants and closing most gathering places in an effort to fight the spread of the new coronavirus. 

Doing so makes Flagstaff the first city in Arizona to take such measures. Tempe is expected to vote Thursday to give its mayor greater power. 

The Flagstaff proclamation bans all restaurants, cafes, coffeehouses and the like from serving food and drinks for consumption on-site, and bans people from remaining on-site to eat or drink. Instead, businesses can offer delivery, drive-thru and to-go options. 

It also closes gathering places like bars, breweries, wineries, theaters, performance venues, libraries, museums, gyms and fitness centers, and all entertainment facilities such as bingo halls, bowling alleys and skating rinks.

The restrictions do not apply to grocery stores or convenience stores, pharmacies or drug stores, food banks or cafeterias within health care facilities or on college campuses. 

The proclamation goes into effect at 8 p.m. Tuesday and will be in place through April 1. Anyone who violates the prohibitions can be charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor, according to the proclamation. 

“As the mayor of the city of Flagstaff you elected me to look over our well being and that is what I am doing here tonight,” Evans said in a livestreamed video posted on the Flagstaff City Government Facebook page Monday night. 

“We will definitely weather this. This is something that Flagstaff is very good at, and that is being community and being resilient. I want you to know that this decision did not come lightly," she said. 

On Sunday, Evans declared a state of emergency for the city, which gives her the power to impose such restrictions through proclamations. 

The Tempe City Council will consider a similar measure at a special meeting on Thursday. The ordinance, if approved by six of seven council members, would allow the mayor to declare a citywide emergency and give the mayor the authority to enact "necessary emergency response measures via proclamation," according to a news release from the city.

"The city is pursuing this as a precautionary measure in case it is necessary, during the course of the response to this rapidly evolving public health emergency," Tempe's released statement.

In Evans's proclamation, she cited Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's phone conference Monday with the state's mayors urging them to take greater action to reduce the spread of the virus.  

Arizona's strategies to prevent the spread of the disease, also called COVID-19, remain less aggressive than those taken by other states, even after Gov. Doug Ducey reversed course Sunday and ordered schools to close through the end of the month.

Reach Kaila White at Kaila.White@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kailawhite.