BOURBONNAIS – During Monday night’s Village of Bourbonnais Board Meeting, Mayor Paul Shore furthered the call out for mitigation of the COVID-19 virus by area residents. The Mayor reminded residents, the pandemic isn’t over.
“We’re not over the COVID-19 virus situation yet,” said Mayor Schore on Monday night. “We’ve done a very very good job in the county. It looks as though we’re now separated from Cook and Chicago and Kankakee and Will are connected as far as areas, but we still need to be vigilant.”
As of Monday afternoon, Kankakee County was on the rebound in active cases moving up over 400 active cases of COVID-19 last Friday, the most active cases in the county since late June. Bourbonnais has had 281 cases confirmed to date since the pandemic began according to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH).
“People still need to wear masks. People still need to do social separation. Everybody’s got to continue to keep this together while our goal, one of our main goals, obviously get the kids back to school. We can’t risk another outbreak and start seeing large numbers again, because that’s obviously going to affect what happens with those kids.” Schore stressed.
The Village of Bourbonnais is just one of several villages across the State of Illinois that have had their own run-ins with the virus up close and personal. In late May the Village announced some of their own employees had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
“Even if you don’t like wearing a mask, if nothing else, do it for the older people in the community,” Schore said Monday. “Do it for the kids so they can get back to school. Just everybody works together on this, and we’re finally going to get this thing to an end.”
The request came hours before a joint announcement was released by IDPH, the Kankakee County Health Department, and other organizations of a new outbreak at Shapiro Developmental Center in Kankakee.
Friendship Festival Update
Any potential hope for a Fall Friendship Festival fell to the waste bin last week as the Festival Committee announced the 2020 event had officially been canceled.
“You know, it’s kind of a sad thing. We kept trying to figure out a way to do even a modified type of Festival, but it just got to the point where it was just not going to happen.” Mayor Schore said Monday night. “Trying to deal with the carnival and the state and the state’s not even inspecting carnivals right now and trying to deal with the rest of it. We very much appreciate all the hard work the Friendship Festival Committee (FFC) does year-round.”
The Annual Summer Festival was first postponed back in mid-May.
“Even without having a festival this year, they (FFC) still gave out the college scholarships that they give out every year, out of their funds, to help the young people of the community.” Said Schore. “We’ll get through this, 2021 will be bigger and better than ever and we’ll have a huge festival and also try to forget about COVID-19.”
