Mayor Andy Berke on Monday said city parks and public spaces will be reopening this week.
He said certain businesses will be allowed to reopen on Friday, including golf courses, drive-thru car washes and pet grooming businesses.
The mayor said it is up to the county health department whether retail businesses, including Hamilton Place Mall and Northgate Mall, can open on Wednesday at 50 percent capacity.
While the mayor wished to keep Chattanooga closed as the rest of the county opened up, his administration was overruled by the governor. Chattanooga’s restaurants can now open at 50 percent capacity.
“First of all, maybe it isn’t. We’re going to wait to see what this is,” said Mayor Berke when asked about if future orders from Governor Bill Lee would include similar language. “There’s a section in this order that all orders of local officials other than the health department are superseded. My expectation is that we will see similar language again.”
Mayor Berke said he hoped to clear up any confusion businesses may have after receiving different messages from various governmental entities. He said the motivation behind holding this press conference was to clarify what is happening.
“I believe it was the right decision to leave the decision to local mayors, given we are on the front lines of this pandemic,” said Mayor Berke. “I believe this confusion has hurt the city’s ability to re-open today, because they did not know even as of Friday afternoon, what the situation was in our city.”
While restaurants are able to allow dine-in customers, they can only be at 50 percent capacity. Mayor Berke said the city has no role in enforcing or coming up with guidelines for this, since the county is in charge of coming up with guidelines.
“I wanted to have good dialogue with businesses on how we can be most helpful,” said Mayor Berke on his plan to get PPE to businesses that are reopening. “We know we need to work with nonprofits like the Urban League and the Chamber of Commerce to have that conversation. We need to accelerate that as much as possible, given the change in time schedule.”
Mayor Berke said he had planned on looking at test results from recent weeks before re-opening Chattanooga.
“If you look at the big four task force report or the Nashville Plan, you will see a phase one,” said Mayor Berke. “Understanding that it depended on the numbers, I was hoping it would be weeks, not months.”