New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will enforce the rules of phase one when businesses start to reopen with a "light touch" that is "problem-solving focused."
“We see a problem we want the business to address it — we don’t want to penalize, we want to fix problems," the mayor said.
The city is communicating with a lot of businesses as it approaches phase one sometime during the first two weeks of June.
“We’re not there till we’re there,” de Blasio said, but as businesses come online, there will be heavy communications, inspections "as per usual” and making sure rules are being followed.
Some context: De Blasio noted that during the Memorial Day weekend, there were few issues between parks, bars and restaurants, adding “we just didn’t have a lot of problems.”
“Were not trying to be heavy handed, wer'e just trying to be present, and that has been working," he said.
The mayor did not provide the number of businesses that may not be returning as a result of economic loss due to the pandemic, however, he said anecdotally, much of what he has heard in conversations with businesses is that they want to come back and stronger.