City of Miami expands restaurant capacity, won’t enforce COVID curfew until midnight
The city of Miami loosened its COVID-19 restrictions around restaurant capacity and pushed its curfew back to midnight after commissioners expressed concern over small-restaurant owners suffering losses through the pandemic.
Commissioners approved the changes at a meeting Thursday that underscored the city government’s differences with the county’s approach to handling the current stage of the pandemic. One had reservations about changes for fear the virus, which is still spreading with a positivity rate between 4% and 5% in the community, will spike.
The new rule will allow restaurants inside Miami city limits to open at up to 100% capacity so long as they can maintain six feet between groups of people, and owners would not be required to submit a plan to the city explaining their occupancy plan, as they are required to do for the rest of Miami-Dade County.
In the city of Miami, owners can still use sidewalks and parking lots to serve more tables and make up for losses since the coronavirus shuttered the economy. Up to 10 people will be allowed per table inside and outside.
“This allows more flexibility,” said City Manager Art Noriega.
In practice, officials expect most proprietors to be able to increase capacity past 50% without bureaucratic red tape at City Hall. City inspectors will still rove the city day and night to enforce distancing rules and the wearing of face masks for those not seated at a table.
“Obviously if there are tables on top of each other, we’ll be issuing a citation,” he said.
For the new midnight curfew, Noriega said Miami police officers will no longer be enforcing the county’s 11 p.m. curfew. Miami-Dade cops could still technically enforce the curfew inside city limits.
Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla proposed moving restaurants inside the city of Miami back to 100% capacity, arguing that businesses have suffered enough through economic restrictions created during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said it’s time to reopen while still observing social distancing requirements and limits for tables.
“We are hurting our business, we are hurting our business owners, and we are hurting our economy,” he said. “People are still going out to restaurants. They’re just not going out to restaurants in Dade County.”
In the curfew change, there’s a provision that the commission would reevaluate the data for COVID-19 infections in two weeks and decided if its decision should be reconsidered or if the curfew could be pushed later.
Díaz de la Portilla, Ken Russell, Manolo Reyes and Joe Carollo voted to approve the changes. Commissioner Keon Hardemon was not present for both votes.
In a debate that stretched more than an hour over the details, there was a major common thread: Miami commissioners emphasized their disagreement with the way Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez responded to a broader economic reopening across the state.
“Mayor Giménez has failed us in terms of creating a blanket policy that we could follow uniformly to protect the health, safety and business vitality of our community, so we have to make some unique policies,” Russell said, after Díaz de la Portilla encouraged him to be more direct in criticizing the county mayor.
Carollo was somewhat reluctant to embrace the changes, saying that while mom-and-pop businesses are in dire need of help, the city is not out of the woods yet with the coronavirus. He noted that more than 400 new infections were reported for Miami-Dade County on Thursday, according to figures from the Florida Department of Health.
“That’s a lot of people that are getting COVID-19 a day,” Carollo said. “If you take into consideration that we’re not doing as much testing as before, it’s alarming.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis recently moved Florida into a new phase of reopening, prompting Miami-Dade County’s government to create some rules that were stricter than the state regulations. Commissioners essentially disagreed with the county’s interpretation of the governor’s order, providing a legal basis for the city to stray from the county rules.
In changing these regulations, the city for the first time in the pandemic chose to enforce rules that are looser than those of Miami-Dade County. Like several other instances this year, commissioners found fault with the way Giménez’s administration has regulated commerce as the economy reopens. Giménez has allowed restaurants to reopen at 50% capacity unless they prove they can accommodate 100% capacity and still maintain six-foot separation between tables.
The resolutions instructed Noriega not to enforce county rules on restaurants and to refrain from enforcing the curfew until midnight. Noriega told the Miami Herald the new city-specific rules went into effect immediately after the votes Thursday evening.
Mayor Francis Suarez, who in recent weeks stated his reservations over DeSantis’ order, acknowledged Carollo’s concerns but said he felt the county’s restrictions, particularly the curfew, were not truly aiding the fight to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“We’re definitely not out of the woods,” he said. “We are obviously two to three weeks from knowing exactly how the governor’s order and the opening of schools are going to impact us.”
While reminding commissioners COVID-19 cases could easily spike in the coming months, particularly if people flout social distancing rules in bars and nightclubs and enforcement is lax, Carollo pointed to nationwide statistics on the virus. He said Miami-Dade will likely reach 175,000 confirmed cases and 3,500 deaths in the coming days, grim milestones he said he does not want to contribute to.
“We’re playing with people’s lives,” he said.
Díaz de la Portilla, who was later echoed by Suarez, offered the counterpoint that economic hardship has its own long-term consequences. He said restaurants need to serve more patrons to stave off permanent closure.
“I’m worried about your economic health,” he said.
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 9:55 PM.
