Local restaurants will be allowed to expand their outdoor seating to accommodate more customers without having to appeal to bureaucratic entities. Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon issued an Executive Order Friday that suspends any permit, ordinance or regulation in relation to outdoor seating in the county.
“Right now to expand outdoor seating, depending on the municipality, you may need zoning board approval, planning board approval,” said McMahon. “There’s a lot of red tape around that. We want to get these businesses going. So the executive order allows these businesses to get through that red tape.”
The order is effective immediately. Additionally, McMahon said the region is on track to start Phase Three next week. Even with many different parts of the county opening up anddata trendingpositively, McMahon said there needs to be the utmost caution with opening up nursing homes and assisted living facilities to visitors again.
“There’s many parts of this process that I think are way too conservative, and I think are moving way too slow. But this is not one of them,” said McMahon. “This is an area that you cannot make a mistake, with our most vulnerable.”
McMahon said coronavirus numbers locally have largely been driven by senior living facilities. People over the age of 65 and with pre-existing medical conditions have largely made up the number of COVID-19 deaths in Onondaga County.
