There’s a new effort to curb New York City’s outdoor dining program designed to help struggling restaurants and provide diners a safer environment to eat during the pandemic.
A lawsuit filed with the state Supreme Court seeks to dissolve the emergency orders that have continued to allow restaurants to serve diners outdoors.
The petitioners argue that efforts by the state and city to extend the program on an emergency basis are arbitrary, since most other safety measures spurred by the health crisis has been scaled back or entirely dissolved.
“By July 2022, respondents’ chief executive officers had abandoned vaccine and mask mandates, occupancy limitations on indoor dining and social distancing requirements and recognized that no public health emergency now exists,” the text of the lawsuit argues.
The lawsuit in great detail lists the pandemic programs designed to assist New Yorkers that have since gone by the wayside, including unemployment assistance, certain vaccine and mask mandates, the eviction moratorium, as well as the city’s test-and-trace program.
Allowing the continuation of outdoor dining structures, the group claims, is detrimental to the city. They point to “increased and excessive noise, traffic congestion, garbage and uncontrolled rodent populations, the blocking of sidewalks and roadways” among the many ways the program is an “illegal encroachment” upon the city’s residents.
The Daily News, first to report the lawsuit, spoke to a Manhattan store owner who felt the outdoor structures needed better regulation or the city should kill the program.
“Either removal or reformation, or some sort of standards,” David Owens, 78, told the outlet. “If they removed them, I wouldn’t miss them.”
Mayor Eric Adams defended the program on Monday, calling himself a supporter of outdoor dining while acknowledging some ways it could be improved upon.
“I think we need to modify it because some of the outdoor dining locations have become a hazard. They have become places that’s not suitable. And I think there’s a way to modify to standardize what the structure should look like, and they have to be used,” Adams said.
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