Norwalk attractions ‘ecstatic’ about indoor capacity limits being lifted
NORWALK — Gov. Ned Lamont announced Thursday that he will soon lift capacity restrictions for many businesses, a move that will impact some Norwalk attractions.
Capacity limits will be lifted for restaurants, retail, personal services, bowling allies, museums, houses of worship, aquariums, zoos and museums as of March 19. In a second tier of the reopening plan starting April 2, state officials said outdoor amusement parks can reopen, outdoor stadiums can open at 50 percent of capacity but capped at 10,000 people, and indoor stadiums can open at 10 percent capacity.
“The governor has always been very cautious about his approach to the coronavirus,” said Mayor Harry Rilling on Thursday. “Based on the number of new cases and what’s happening in the state, he feels comfortable with this. We’re watching closely to
see how that will impact Norwalk.”
Rilling said should cases increase following the lifting of these limits, it’s possible the city would add its own local capacity limits. However, he said this would likely be limited to events and only in the case that new cases were being traced back to them.
“I don’t anticipate the need to put restrictions on any local businesses at this point in time,” he said. “We’d want to avoid that at all costs.”
The city has been issuing permits for the spring and summer with the hope some popular city events will be safe to host by then. However, all permits have the caveat they may be revoked should state guidelines still limit gatherings.
“We’re keeping an eye on things,” Rilling said. “We’re watching what’s going on. Every event that has been applied for, we make it clear to the applicants we certainly will approve but on the condition it’s safe to have the event. We’re hoping we can start to have some of these events and doing it safely and abiding why whatever COVID-19 restrictions are in place.”
Michael Reilly, president of the Seaport Association and Chairman of Norwalk Oyster Festival, said he’s hopeful guidelines will continue to be lifted to allow them to have the festival, which is one of Norwalk’s largest events and brings in about 40,000 people across three days.
“The whole event business is obviously in tough shape because of all this,” he said Thursday. “We’re hoping there will be further rollbacks. It’s our hope by late summer we’ll be able to have a festival at full capacity.”
Norwalk’s weekly COVID case numbers have been falling since the beginning of the year. The city has seen fewer than 200 new cases reported weekly since early February.
The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, one of the only aquariums in the state, said Thursday it would be following the new protocols while adhering to the safety guidelines they set when reopening in June. This includes requiring all guests over the age of 2 to wear masks, providing enhanced cleanings of common areas, encouraging one-way flow through galleries and strongly recommending advance, online purchases of tickets.
“We are ecstatic that the capacity limits will be lifted,” said Jason Patlis, president and CEO of the Maritime Aquarium. “It is a testament to the leadership of the governor and the residents of Connecticut that the state is in a position to do this responsibly. The Maritime Aquarium will follow the new capacity allowances announced by the governor, but will continue the practices and protocols we have had in place since our reopening in June.”
However, the new guidelines still leave some limitations in place. Commercial gatherings like wedding halls will be limited to 100 people indoors and 200 outside. Private residential gatherings will be limited to 25 people inside and 100 outside.
Indoor theaters will remain at 50 percent capacity and bars will remain closed.
Derek Signore, house manager at the Wall Street Theater, said he hopes to see the capacity lifted on indoor theaters soon. The theater ran an outside concert series last summer and hopes to do the same this year, but has been limited in its indoor events due to current capacity restrictions.
Signore said operating at such a limited capacity doesn’t bring in enough money to host larger musical productions. The theater has been doing smaller comedy shows instead and streaming them online. But Signore hopes the next restrictions lifted will be on indoor theaters, given the strict COVID safety protocols they have in place.
“I think the whole entire hospitality and entertainment industry have been ravaged,” he said. “We’re thankful our brethren in restaurant industry can open to greater capacity . ... As far as the theater is concerned, we’re welcoming these new changes in the hope as we progress, we’ll increase our capacity.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats passed the most ambitious effort in decades to overhaul policing nationwide, avoiding a potential clash with moderates in their own party who were wary of reigniting the “defund the police” debate they say hurt them during last fall’s election.
Approved 220-212 late Wednesday, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is named for the man whose killing by police in Minnesota last Memorial Day sparked demonstrations nationwide. It would ban chokeholds and “qualified immunity” for law enforcement while creating national standards for policing in a bid to bolster accountability, and was first approved last summer only to stall in the then-Republican controlled Senate. The bill is supported by President Joe Biden.
“My city is not an outlier, but rather an example of the inequalities our country has struggled with for centuries,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who represents the Minneapolis area near where Floyd died.
Floyd’s family watched the emotional debate from a nearby House office building and said “defunding the police” is not what the legislation is about.
“We just want to be treated equal. We just want to deescalate situations,” said Brandon Williams, Floyd’s nephew. “We want to feel safe when we encounter law enforcement. We’re not asking for anything extra. We’re not asking for anything that we don’t feel is right.”
Democrats hustled to pass the bill a second time, hoping to combat police brutality and institutional racism after the deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans following interactions with law enforcement — images of which were sometimes jarringly captured on video.
But the debate over legislation turned into a political liability for Democrats as Republicans seized on calls by some activists and progressives to “defund the police” to argue that supporters were intent on slashing police force budgets.
Though this bill doesn’t do that, moderate Democrats said the charge helped drive Democratic defeats in swing districts around the country last November.
“No one ran on ‘defund the police,’ but all you have to do is make that a political weapon,” said Teas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.
Republicans quickly revived the “defund the police” criticisms before the vote. “Our law enforcement officers need more funding not less,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis.
Still, even the House’s more centrist lawmakers, some representing more conservative districts, ultimately backed the bill.
“Black Americans have endured generations of systemic racism and discrimination for too long, and this has been painfully evident in their treatment by law enforcement,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash, who chairs the moderate New Democrat Coalition.
That endorsement came despite the bill’s prohibitions on so-called qualified immunity, which shields law enforcement from certain lawsuits and is one of the main provisions that will likely need to be negotiated in any compromise with the Senate. Another possible point of contention is provisions easing standards for prosecution of law enforcement officers accused of wrongdoing.
Police unions and other law enforcement groups have argued that, without legal protections, fear of lawsuits will stop people from becoming police officers — even though the measure permits suits only against law enforcement agencies, rather than all public employees.
California Rep. Karen Bass, who authored the bill, understands the challenge some House members face in supporting it.
“My colleagues, several of them, I do not make light of the difficulty they had getting reelected because of the lie around defunding the police,” Bass said.
She called provisions limiting qualified immunity as well as those changing standards for prosecution “the only measures that hold police accountable — that will actually decrease the number of times we have to see people killed on videotape.”
Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci released a statement on behalf of the Floyd family saying the House was “responding to the mandate issued by thousands of Americans who took to the streets last summer to raise their voices for change.”
“This represents a major step forward to reform the relationship between police officers and communities of color and impose accountability on law enforcement officers whose conscious decisions preserve the life or cause the death of Americans, including so many people of color,” Crump and Romanucci said. “Now we urge the Senate to follow suit.”
That may be a taller order. Even though Democrats now control both chambers of Congress, it seems unlikely the bill could pass the Senate without substantial changes to win GOP support.
Bass acknowledged the challenges Democrats faced last November — and may likely see again — when former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and other leading Republicans crowded the airwaves with images of cities around the country burning. But she said those attacks, like much of the opposition to the bill, are built on racism, promoting fears about how “the scary Black people are going to attack you if you try to rein in the police.”
“That’s as old as apple pie in our history,” she said. “So do you not act because of that?”
Still, Bass conceded that changes are likely to come if the measure is to win the minimum 60 votes it will need to advance in the Senate, which is now split 50-50. She said she’d been in contact with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the chamber, and was confident he would help deliver some GOP support.
Scott said this week that the legislation’s sticking points were qualified immunity and prosecutorial standards and that in both areas, “We have to protect individual officers.”
“That’s a red line for me,” Scott said, adding, “Hopefully we’ll come up with something that actually works.”