Danbury Mayor On COVID Spike And Responds To John Oliver’s Rant

Every Tuesday, we get a chance to talk with Danbury Mayor, Mark Boughton, about how the city is dealing with the issues that are affecting our nation.

It was a pretty busy weekend for the Danbury Mayor, there was a COVID-19 spike in Danbury, and the Mayor took some time to film a video response to John Oliver's angry Danbury rant.

Looks like we had a COVID-19 spike in Danbury over the weekend, so where does Danbury stand now?

"We definitely had a spike in numbers and we are trying to get ahead of it and move the numbers back down to one or two cases a day, so it something we really have to watch, and we are taking steps to help slow the spread. There are several areas that we think are important for people to take note of, one is travel, both domestic and international. We have seen people come back from trips and bring COVID with them. We have seen people participating in league sports, both adult and youth sports, where there has been a modest spread in some of the leagues, and we've been able to notify family members through our contact tracing. We've also tracked some of the spread to places of worship, so we have talked to the pastors and asked them to go virtual temporarily until we can get these numbers down. We're also closing down our boat ramp at the town dock, it's something we didn't want to do, especially with a few more weeks of summer left, but we have to get ahead of this and make sure people don't become infected".

Over the weekend, Western Connecticut State University delayed their opening, that's all part of this procedure, isn't it?

"That's correct. WestConn is delaying their opening by two weeks and will be doing online learning initially, and then hope to migrate to classroom learning as soon as they possibly can".

Let's talk about the big story this week, John Oliver had that nasty Danbury rant on his show on August 16, and over the weekend, you've responded with your own video renaming the Danbury Sewage Plant the John Oliver Memorial Sewage Plant.

"We just thought there might be some way we could honor John Oliver for his very positive comments about Danbury. Of course, it's tongue in cheek, it's not real, I've got a number of people who called me thinking we were actually going to rename the plant after him, we're not, but it was just a way to jab back and say look, we're proud of our city, we're proud of who we are as a people, and we will defend our honor no matter what it takes".

Well looks like he actually did make a few more Danbury comments on his last show this past Sunday night, will you have any response to that?

"I don't think we're going to do a response to the response, at some point we've got other things to do, and we're busy here in the city. I think people know who we are, but I always invite Mr. Oliver to come to Danbury, I'd be happy to take him to lunch, and give him a tour of the city".