Montgomery County Council approves order to reopen indoor dining

The Montgomery County Council on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved an executive order to reopen indoor dining at 25% capacity starting this weekend.

In a 7-2 vote, the council approved County Executive Marc Elrich’s order, which will go into effect at 7 a.m. Sunday, Valentine’s Day.

Under the new rule, customers will be limited to 90 minutes inside an eatery, which must keep a daily record of contact information for at least one customer per dining party to help with contact tracing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Additionally, alcohol sold for onsite consumption will be suspended at 10 p.m. daily.

A handful of local residents weighed in on the order during a virtual public hearing before the vote.

Lori McCarty, who lives in Chevy Chase, said she supports indoor dining but added that the 90-minute dining limit “places an undue burden on restaurants.”

“This appears to be an attempt to discourage both restaurants and patrons from seeking indoor dining,” Ms. McCarty said. “Let the residents of Montgomery County decide for themselves whether they feel comfortable dining indoors.”

Council members Evan Glass, Nancy Navarro and Sidney Katz — all of whom voted for the order — acknowledged that people have different “comfort levels” when it comes to patronizing businesses amid the pandemic.

“This is not something that every resident is going to participate in,” Mr. Glass said. “I will be ordering takeout for Valentine’s Day with my husband, and when we feel comfortable, we’ll go back into a restaurant. But for others, some who might be vaccinated right now, they can make that determination [for themselves].”

Resident Alysson Ouoba said officials should focus on reopening the county’s public schools, which have been virtual since March, rather than non-essential businesses.

“Some might say this is a false choice — that we can reopen businesses and schools — but over the past year we’ve seen how this cycle plays out: transmission rates fall, the Board of Education promises to reopen schools, the council permits businesses to reopen, transmission rates rise and the schools remain closed,” Ms. Ouoba said.

Council members Craig Rice and Will Jawando echoed Ms. Ouoba’s sentiments before voting against the measure.

“I’ve spoken with many public health officials, including our own, who have said that this is not a safe activity, and the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has said that, and there are numerous studies that point that out,” Mr. Jawando said.

Mr. Rice mentioned that county health officials have linked “significant amounts of contact tracing and transmission from indoor dining at restaurants.”

“And so to push that aside and say that we’re going to go ahead and move forward, I think, jeopardizes our ability to, in a timely manner, open our schools,” Mr. Rice said.

But Mr. Katz said “this is not an either/or” situation because reopening schools is not solely dependent on prohibiting indoor dining. He added that the ban has driven customers to spend money in neighboring counties.

Local jurisdictions can enforce tighter restrictions than those set statewide by Gov. Larry Hogan, who currently allows indoor dining at 50% capacity and recently lifted a 10 p.m. curfew on alcohol sales.

Montgomery County, which is Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction, has barred indoor dining for nearly two months and is the last in the state to maintain such a ban.

The primary indicators county officials use to make decisions about restrictions include the rate of weekly average cases per 100,000 residents and the 14-day average test positivity rate.

The weekly case rate has decreased by more than half since the ban initially went into effect, going from 43.7 per 100,000 on Dec. 15 to 21.0 per 100,000 as of Tuesday. The test positivity rate has dropped from 6.2% to 5.1% as of Monday.

Moreover, Tuesday’s data show 60,835 cases and 1,307 deaths have been reported in the county of more than 1 million residents.

In other pandemic-related county news, the Montgomery County School Board on Tuesday approved a plan to begin bringing students back into classrooms on March 1. The school district has provided online-only instruction since March due to the pandemic.

Students in select special education programs will be the first group to return March 1, followed by a phased return of all students no later than April 26.

Children will be given the option to choose between a hybrid of in-person and online learning or to remain online-only. The tentative timeline coincides with Gov. Larry Hogan’s recent push for schools to offer some form of in-person learning by March.