Monroe County’s COVID-19 state of emergency to end Sunday

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Monroe County’s COVID-19 state of emergency will end on Sunday.

Monroe County Executive Adam Bello made the announcement Friday.

The state of emergency has been in effect for nearly 16 months.

Bello said Friday there is no longer a need for it with increased vaccination numbers and low positivity rates. Many of the emergency orders that go with the state of emergency have already expired.

Bello signed emergency legislation in December 2020, which prohibited services like GrubHub, DoorDash, and UberEats from charging any restaurant in Monroe County a delivery service fee of more than 15% of the price of any order.

Now that the state of emergency is over, there’s push to make the cap on third-party delivery services permanent.

He and Legislator Rachel Barnhart called for the Monroe County Legislature to make the cap a local law.

"The order has saved individual restaurants thousands of dollars over the 6 months it’s been in effect," Barnhart said. "It made the difference for restaurants between opening and closing and laying off staff."

"We saved almost $8,000 in the months that we were doing takeout and delivery," said Golden Fox owner Corrina Kasandrinos.

Democrats in the Monroe County Legislature proposed the bill last year for a permanent cap, but it was tabled last November.