Baltimore County will ease capacity restrictions
Move aligns with governor’s loosening of COVID-19 rules
Baltimore County will loosen coronavirus-related capacity limits on restaurants, bars, stores and religious establishments starting at 5 p.m. Friday, following Gov. Larry Hogan’s lead, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. announced.
The county will end capacity limits on outdoor and indoor dining at restaurants and bars, retail businesses, religious facilities, fitness centers, casinos, personal services and indoor recreational establishments — but those businesses still must maintain social distancing.
Theaters and concert, convention and wedding venues may operate at 50% capacity under the new county order.
Currently, statewide orders limit bars and restaurants to no more than 50% capacity, both indoors and outdoors. A statewide mask requirement remains in place for public indoor facilities and outdoors when social distancing isn’t possible.
Olszewski also is lifting restrictions on social gatherings, currently no more than 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors, and is eliminating restrictions on amateur sports events, effective at 5 p.m. Friday.
At bars, restaurants and other places with food service, customers must be seated to be served and tables must be arranged with six feet of distance between them. And face coverings still are required indoors by the state for those older than 4.
A new executive order will be issued retaining the county’s cap on fees that third-parties charge restaurants to process orders and deliver food.
The county is “prepared to take steps to increase restrictions, as needed,” should data indicate that Hogan’s further reopening of businesses “creates a detrimental impact to the health, safety, and welfare of our residents,” according to a news release.
The county will monitor key metrics, including hospitalizations and positive coronavirus case numbers, when considering whether to tighten restrictions again, according to county spokesman Sean Naron.
But it’s unclear how local jurisdictions may impose tighter restrictions than the state. Hogan’s executive order scrapped language from previous edicts that allowed local leaders to set limits to help “save lives or prevent exposure to COVID,”[b] [/ b]although he has said counties and Baltimore City still may impose tighter restrictions.
Despite the reopening plans, Olszewski, like other local leaders, was critical of “the state’s patchwork approach” in its coronavirus response, which “creates confusion and limits our ability to significantly impact public health,” he said in a statement.
“The pandemic is not over and we cannot let our guard down now,” he said.
The move comes as Baltimore County, the state’s third-most-populous jurisdiction, continues to outpace the largest of Maryland’s 24 counties in vaccinations, putting second shots in the arms of 12% of its population. New cases also have tapered off.
As of Thursday, the county’s seven-day testing positivity rate, which measures the percentage of tests that return positive results, was 3.89%. That’s marginally higher than the state’s, which ticked up slightly to 3.58% Thursday.
Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties also have announced they will ease restrictions this week.
Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott, however, announced Thursday the city would not ease restrictions at Hogan’s pace, but he provided no additional details.
With St. Patrick’s Day looming next weekend, some Baltimore-area bar owners expect to see more crowds, although social distancing mandates mean they’ll still have to limit capacity.
The Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Halethorpe — the only U.S. brewery operated by the Dublin-based beer maker — has planned a month-long St. Patrick’s Day celebration this year in lieu of the weekend-long celebration that in recent years has drawn thousands.
In a statement, Michael Donilon, Guinness Open Gate’s general manager, said easing restrictions doesn’t change the brewery’s plans, which include “socially-distant” live music, dancers and movies, special beers and traditional Irish fare from Thursday through Sunday since March 4. The brewery will be open on St. Patrick’s Day on March 17.
Donilon said the brewery is fortunate to have a 2-acre campus and sizable outdoor space.
“The monthlong celebration was a strategic decision with the safety of our guests and staff in mind, so we aren’t encouraging a large gathering on just one weekend,” he said.
The cost to replace a water main can run thousands of dollars per foot. Heck, a single backhoe to dig out a faulty drainage pipe might be $75,000, not including the operator’s pay. But all that pales compared to the expense of eliminating sewage overflows from Baltimore’s Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant: The ongoing, court-supervised Headworks Project carries a price tag of $430 million at last check. So, if there’s one thing Baltimore needs desperately, it’s a highly qualified person supervising these concerns. Too much is at stake to consider any other strategy. We need a Tom Brady to quarterback the team.
That’s why the recent nattering, whether in the City Council chambers or on social media, over how much Baltimore will pay its next public works director is, to put it mildly, foolish. On Monday at the urging of Mayor Brandon Scott, the council approved a 30% pay increase for the next person to hold that position. It lifts the salary to $245,000 annually, the third highest on the city payroll behind Police Commissioner Michael Harrison ($275,000) and the new city administrator ($250,000). Granted, the timing is lousy if only for the optics involved. The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on city residents and here is some newbie who is going to earn more than five times the average starting salary for a teacher in this state. Nice work if you can get it, right? But the point is that only the best should be able to get it, and we need to do our part to entice the best into wanting it.
What Baltimore needs badly is to function better. The city needs to fix failing infrastructure. It needs water billing that works. Better protection against flooding. A better recycling system and cleaner streets. It needs to stop polluting local waterways (and basements) with sewage overflows. It needs to better attend to 1,400 miles of sewer pipe, 4,000 maintenance holes, 250,000 sewer house connections, 10 pump stations and two wastewater treatment plants. And it needs to do all these things as efficiently and effectively as possible because — did we mention there’s both a budget crisis and a need to reduce taxes? The public works director is the proverbial quarterback in all these efforts. If you save $57,000 to get a Dwayne Haskins as your starting QB instead of a Tom Brady, what will it cost in the long run?
We’ll concede that paying someone a higher salary doesn’t guarantee their effectiveness (See JaMarcus Russell, formerly of the Oakland Raiders, for details). We only point out that paying a low one means the highly effective people won’t bother to apply for your job. You see this in most every walk of life. No one on the City Council should feel the least bit of guilt for approving a competitive salary given that the head of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission performing similar duties for Prince George’s and Montgomery counties will still make substantially more. No, the only guilt they should feel is if they fail to hold accountable the next person installed in the post, no matter the salary.
What Baltimore residents have a right to expect from their elected leaders is a commitment to setting measurable goals for the next public works director and holding that person to them. How well should the water billing system be operating in six months? In a year? Will Headworks be completed in a certain time frame and under a certain cost? Will sewage overflows be curtailed by a certain date? This should be the focus of attention. The reality is that $57,000 is chump change compared to the enormous cost of mismanaged public infrastructure. Get someone who keeps it in good repair and runs it well, and then hold that individual accountable and you have something more precious than gold: competent leadership. Baltimore ought to be willing to pay any reasonable price for that.
Of course, we do not if the next public works head will be Tom Brady (although at his age, the actual Tom Brady might be a candidate given the concussion risks associated with his current gig). But we can certainly expect that person to produce statistics demonstrating he or she deserves serious all-pro consideration. Baltimore needs nothing less.