San Diego County To Halt Indoor Restaurant Service As COVID Cases Reach 17,000

Speaker 1: 00:00 Thousands of restaurants around San Diego, a reeling from the counties order to shut down indoor dining for the next three weeks due to a resurgence of the Corona virus. Some restaurants are working to find ways they can continue to do business outside this morning. San Diego mayor, Kevin Faulkner's thrown a lifeline to the restaurants with an emergency executive order here to give us more details on that order is KPBS Metro reporter, Andrew Bowen. Thanks for joining us, Andrew. Thank you, Alison. So what would this executive ought to do for, for the restaurants that are being very hard hit by this quarantine? Right? So as of now, and we're still waiting for some more details from the mayor's office, but I'm currently under the current rules. If a restaurant wants to put tables on, say a sidewalk, um, cemetery adjacent street parking, or a private parking lot that they actually own themselves, it often takes weeks, sometimes a month to get that permit approved by the city. Speaker 1: 00:51 So what the executive order appears to do, and we're, again, we're still waiting for some details as to waive the requirement for that permit. Temporarily. If we look back to just a few weeks, the mayor actually held a press conference, announcing this plan to streamline the permitting for outdoor dining, uh, subsidized permit fees for a limited number of businesses. And that was supposed to go to the city council for approval today. That was their schedule. Um, but apparently it got held up with legal review, so it never made it onto the council agenda. And that looked particularly bad, you know, happy name to coincide with the day that restaurants are forced to closed indoor dining. So they, you know, they, they missed the intended deadline for, you know, approving these streamlined permit approvals. And so the mayor decided an executive order is kind of a stop gap measure that that can, um, help, uh, restaurants outright. Speaker 1: 01:42 Now, how much does a permit for outdoor dining cost? They can cost a well over a thousand dollars. This is just for reference the same type of permit that you would need from the city. If you wanted to hold a farmer's market or some other type of special event that would require, um, some, uh, you know, encroachment into the public right of way, the mayor says he intends to allocate about $300,000 for fee assistance, and those fees are paid into what's called an enterprise fund. So, um, the, the fees that are paid then end up paying the salaries of the city workers who have to check the plans and verify compliance with all the rules and things like that. And it's meant to be a self sustaining fund. So, uh, the city would essentially be paying from its general fund into the enterprise fund in order to, um, you know, make sure that those costs are still recovered. Speaker 1: 02:29 No, some, uh, expanded outdoor dining has already been in place in some parts of the city how's that been working out well? Yeah, so it has happened in little Italy. Um, on the weekends, they've been closing some street parking on, uh, I believe it's India street in order to expand outdoor dining, setting up some extra tables and chairs out there. Uh, they went through the regular permit process. Uh, I haven't seen it myself. Um, but I also haven't heard any major complaints about it. And if restaurants are able to fill those tables, then clearly there's the demands there, especially as people are trying to get things back to normal. What we do know about COVID-19 is that it's much more difficult to transmit outdoors than it is indoors because of better ventilation. Sunlight also acts as a sort of disinfectant. Uh, so given our great weather in San Diego outdoor dining is a pretty easy way to let restaurants continue their operations, especially in, in light of the recent count of public health order while also mitigating the risk of outbreaks, which can happen and have happened in restaurants with indoor dining. Speaker 1: 03:32 So the restaurant industry always contends with very thin profit margins. What would you say has been the effect of that, of restrictions on restaurants and their bottom lines of these quarantines? Yeah, well, restaurants were, uh, many restaurants were able to stay open during the early weeks of the, uh, shutdown, uh, simply by offering, uh, takeout dining and, you know, not all restaurants, but some were able to do that. Uh, and when indoor dining expanded, we saw a lot more restaurants being able to bring back some employees continue, you know, offering those jobs. And, and so I think that, you know, with the, with the rollback of indoor dining, this is really a lifeline that could help some restaurants, um, either avoid further layouts or having to lay people off again after they laid them off once before, uh, could, you know, help them obviously pay their rent if they don't own their own buildings. Speaker 1: 04:25 And it's, you know, really just, uh, a lot of restaurants have actually closed. I mean, there's, there's one that's just down the street from me that's closed permanently. And so, you know, the business districts or neighborhoods obviously have an interest in keeping those restaurants alive. As soon as a storefront goes vacant, there are all other side effects that can cause problems with blight, graffiti, uh, you know, encampments. And so, uh, you know, the restaurant industry definitely was eager to get this done and, and was pretty upset at the fact that the city council was not going to be voting on it today. So I imagined that there I'm feeling pretty good about the mayor's executive action and this executive action, assuming it does get signed only applies to the city of San Diego, right. Other cities in the County would, would have to take similar steps for it to apply. Speaker 1: 05:13 That's right. And I have actually heard anecdotally from a couple of other cities, national city comes to mind that they were also working on some permits, um, particularly with, uh, parking lots. That's maybe something easier for cities to allow, um, outdoor dining and private parking, lots that, um, otherwise, you know, would have to be reserved for, uh, restaurant guests. Um, and those things, you know, have happened before. And I think that other cities are probably going to be looking hard at those choices and maybe, uh, also accelerating those plans, uh, in light of the, the change in the band and, uh, indoor dining and restaurants. Is there a date for when the city council might actually sign off on this? The last that I've heard is July 14th. So a week from today, uh, you know, barring any other delays that might happen. So, you know, the, the mayor, as I mentioned, intended this as more of a stop gap measure, uh, and the ultimate attention is still for the city council to take a vote themselves. And, and to make this more of a permanent solution. We've been speaking with KPBS, Metro reporter, Andrew Bowen, Andrew. Thanks so much. Thank you, Alison.