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Welcome back.
As County Mayor Carlos Giminenz
is pushing forward with a plan
to lessen restrictions during
the pandemic here in Miami-Dade
County, Dan Gelber, the
Mayor of Miami Beach,
is taking a more
cautious approach.
We're going to go a little
bit slower than the county,
which is actually
opening up Monday.
We want to make sure that
our retail has enough time to
prepare, and our restaurants, so
we will be getting with retail
and general
business on Wednesday,
the 20th, at this point.
Assuming that we can
get all of that in place,
the following Wednesday, we will
be starting with restaurants at
some limited capacity, and
perhaps with expansive
outdoor seating.
Let's talk a little bit
more about restaurants.
So what are the rules that
are going to be governing
restaurants, when they have
a chance to start reopening?
We're going to try to have very
vigorous testing with employees,
with masks, obviously social
distancing is going to be in
effect, and the
capacity, while maybe 50%,
the real limiting
amount will be the 6 feet.
We're going to be
very careful about that,
and we're going out, we
have 800 restaurants,
but our attention is to get
out to all of them in some way,
to make sure that they
understand the rules,
because the worse thing is that
we have hundreds of restaurants
opening and not understanding
of what they're supposed
to be doing.
I mean this is not a green
light to everything is over.
We are at the end
of the beginning,
but not anywhere near
the end of this thing,
so we're doing this in a
loosening kind of way,
but not any kind of, you know
open season on going and dining.
Have you, has Miami Beach
actually met what the standards
would be for entering phase 1,
as the White House originally
envisioned it?
Does Dade County
meet those standards?
Here are the standards, Jim.
Number one is you've got to
have this trajectory in positive
cases, and the number of cases.
We've also added
hospitalization,
because we think
that's pretty important.
There has been a downward
trajectory for two weeks,
not steep downward, and the
reason I say that is there is
still virus in the community.
It's not like it's bottomed out.
It's clearly still here, which
brings me to the second point,
which is you have enough
of the contract tracing,
so that you can back to infected
people and figure out who
they're infected and get
quarantining of people,
so that you can manage
the virus and its impact,
and I think that the Department
of Health says that there at
already close to 300, and
probably need more than that,
but they also are about to get
more people and the Rockefeller
Foundation, we asked that they
come in and they are actually
also providing
resources and expertise,
so that would be very helpful.
The last thing we want do is
become a depot for the virus,
where people come
to our restaurants,
or people come to a
venue, or Lincoln Road,
or Ocean Drive, and
leave ill, so we're very,
very aware of the
challenge this has,
because what
people have to know,
is that more than
anything we cannot have crowds.
I mean this social
distancing requirement remains.
While you've got to have
a downward trajectory,
and got to have the
contract tracing,
you still, you still need to
exercise social distancing.
That is in the CDC
requirements, and it's
obvious we need to do it.
We cannot have a repeat of what
happened during spring break,
at the beginning of March.
You didn't mention beaches, and
beaches is another major draw to
come over to Miami Beach.
As I understand it right now,
you're not close to opening
the beaches.
Talk to me through what your
criteria's going to be before
you start to open the
beaches, themselves?
Well, I think our manager and
our commissioner understand
this, and I feel this way.
Before June, I think
would be a mistake.
It's not because beaches
intrinsically spread the virus,
it's because
crowds come to beaches,
and we've seen what
happened in April,
and we've seen what
happened in California.
You open up the beaches,
and there's a rush there,
and we know that our beach is
one of the most beautiful in the
world, and it's entirely public,
so it's 7 1/2 miles of beach,
and anybody can go there.
We can't say it's
just for residents.
We can't do that by law, and
we can't limit who's there,
and trying to even enforce a
couple of hours a day in the
morning would be very difficult,
when you think about 7 1/2 miles
of beach, and of course, the
southern part is on Ocean Drive,
and the restaurants there
are going to be opening up,
likely in the street
in a couple of weeks,
so if we see crowds, then we've
done something we have to stop.
We'll have to
curtail it, because,
and it's hard for us,
because I say this,
and I don't mean it
in a kidding way,
but to a great extent,
hospitality community
is a crowd based business.
It's not something where
you want just a few people.
You generally market
yourself to get crowds.
It's really a
crowd based economy.
Lincoln Road has
pretty high rents,
but if they get a
lot of consumers,
they're able to pay those rents.
Well, we don't want
crowds on Lincoln Road,
so what's going to happen there?
We don't want
crowds in restaurants,
or on Ocean Drive,
or Espinola Way,
we don't want them
anywhere, I think in the county.
And that's the challenge.
How does a crowd based
economy survive without crowds?
Well, we just can't
have them right now,
and we certainly can't have them
until we have the kinds of tests
that are instantaneous, that
will tell you whether you've had
it, that are
available all the time.
Until we have something that
allows us to manage crowds,
and manage the
disease in our community,
it's a real problem.
How much anger do
you get the sense,
is out there, where
people are frustrated,
want to blame somebody, but also
looking because of the economic
situation that they're facing,
and wanting to get back to work,
wanting things reopened, willing
to take chances that maybe
you as an elected official
are not willing to take
for the community?
I'm getting a lot of
negative, negative commentary,
and a lot of people
angry, and I understand that,
but I can't, and our
commissioner can't,
and our manager can't, none
of us can allow frustration to
become the organizing
principle of what we do.
In other words we
can't say well,
everybody's frustrated, so
we're going to not listen to the
doctors, and we're not goin to
do something that will have a
long term disastrous impact, but
will let at least the people who
are angry, or
frustrated now feel better.
We can't do that.
Up next, the fight over