Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton is concerned about the economy coming back after Stay at Home orders are lifted.

He says restaurants will likely not hired all employees back because they could have to cut capacity to allow for 6 feet of social distancing.  Boughton added that nonprofits won't be able to have fundraisers right away. He says it's not like on May 20th there can be a gathering of 500 or more people, and even if you could, Boughton questioned who would even go. 

Boughton says this will be worse than post-9/11 and worse than the great recession, something that no one has experienced.

There are a lot of parts to the pandemic response.  Some are easy to pinpoint leaders for--the health side, food distribution or distance learning organization.  But when it comes to the recovery, Boughton plans to hire a Coronavirus Czar. 

This new employee will have the sole focus on how to access all of the available grants, big and small.  Boughton earlier announced a hiring freeze to try to control the budget, but he says this person will pay for themselves through the money they bring back to the City by finding and applying for these grants. 

Boughton says Danbury has been very hard hit by the crisis.