This past holiday weekend in many ways was city and county officials’ worst nightmare realized — droves of people gathered together in bars and pubs and some, without a mask or face covering.
Members of the Greenville City Council shared alarming reports they received over the weekend, as well as sightings of individuals blatantly disregarding the city-wide mask mandate.
Mayor Errick Simmons and council members discussed at length their concerns of nightclubs, bars and the like being especially lax during the holiday weekend when it came to adhering to the CDC’s suggested protocols and guidelines.
They conferred with Greenville Police chief Delando Wilson and fire department chief Ruben Brown on what additional measures needed to be taken to address those concerns based on their recent observations.
Wilson said most of the clubs were compliant on Thanksgiving night as it relates to patrons wearing masks; a lot of the mass congregating without masks was taking place outside of the club.
“I thought warnings were our best options from this weekend and I think it gave us a better understanding of what we’ll have to deal with during the Christmas holidays,” he pointed out.
Vice-mayor Tasha Banks’ reports somewhat conflicted with Wilson’s observations on Thanksgiving night as she went out to observe different establishments as well and indicated she was outraged by what she witnessed.
“Clearly, no one was in compliance and I was out and about on Thanksgiving night…I took pictures, videos and I showed them to the mayor,” Banks said.
“I had my shift commanders and my sergeants from those nights to issue warnings…they went by every club and explained to them the new mandate and about signing the attestation if they are not in compliance,” Wilson said.
He informed the council that warnings were issued over the holiday weekend to individuals who were in violation of the city-wide mask ordinance as well owners of establishments who were in violation, though some elected not to sign the attestation of compliance with the city-wide mask mandate.
Greenville fire chief Ruben Brown put it simply, “We don’t want to put economics before safety,” and city officials echoed that sentiment.
What resulted was a unanimous consensus of the council to be more stringent in its enforcement of the governor’s executive order, which requires the suspension of alcohol sales between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. and businesses limiting the number of customers in the business at one time to no greater than 75% of the business’ capacity provided a minimum of six feet of social distancing may be maintained between persons not in the same household.
Those in violation of the governor’s executive order as it pertains to alcohol sales and limiting capacity will be subject to the consequences established in the city-wide mask mandate ordinance, which states that individuals who violate the city’s mask mandate while in public places and private establishments will be subject to a warning and must sign an attestation of compliance with the city-wide mask mandate for the first offense; every subsequent violation of the mandate will result in a $250 fine.
Businesses and establishments who violate the city-wide mask mandate will be subject to a warning for the first offense; second offense will result in a $500 fine; third offense will result in a $1,000 fine and a 24-hour shutdown pending the owner or operator’s signature on an attestation of compliance with the city-wide mask mandate. Should the attestation not be signed, the shutdown will continue.
Following Tuesday’s regular meeting of the city council, Brown and Wilson met on Wednesday to further discuss business establishments and overcrowding, enforcement of the city-wide mask mandate and how their departments would liaise to better ensure compliance for the safety of the Greenville community.
Brown said the purposes of the police and fire departments are really “kind of intertwined” because of their shared devotion to public safety and highlighted that the fire department’s responsibility as it pertains to establishments and businesses is to enforce the occupancy load.
Given the overcrowding that took place during the Thanksgiving holiday, Brown is making sure the department does its part to address any potential for instances where the result could be hazardous.
“We’re really working toward creating a plan to address the overcrowding of bars, nightclubs, lounges and restaurants, along with enforcing the mask mandate and social distancing,” he said, noting the importance of not creating an environment for a “super spreader” event.
“Some of what we did today was really just identifying those high-risk areas…we’re reestablishing occupancy loads within all businesses and we’ll start with the high-risk areas which are bars, lounges, restaurants and clubs — we’re going in and measuring the square footage of the building, looking at the exits, how many exit doors they have, the width of the doors and looking to see if they have a sprinkler system and smoke alarms for fire prevention,” Brown explained.
He added that random inspections will start as early as this week and will be during the peak and working hours of operations.
Shutting down businesses isn’t the departments’ aim, but enforcement, education and making the public aware of any and all issues that need to be corrected is imperative.
“We’ll just really appreciate it if the business owners work with us so we can make sure we get to where we need to be,” Brown said.
