93-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news updates with Kathy Romano.

And here we are today is Monday, September 21st.

Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning.

Starting today, restaurants in much of Pennsylvania can boost indoor dining capacity from 25% to 50%. However, this does not include Philadelphia, where indoor dining capacity will not increase until at least October. The changes come as the weather begins to get cooler, and restaurants want the capacity to put more customers inside. Also beginning on Monday, last call

is moving to 11 p.m. meaning some restaurants are losing their last few hours of business.

Under the new requirements, customers will have until midnight to finish their drinks,

and then the facility will have to shut down. Under the new requirements, customers, sorry,

that's the exactly what I just said.

But it was beautiful.

Yes, it was.

Governor Tom Wolfe acknowledged that the pandemic has taken a significant toll on the food service industry and said the state is trying to balance public health and economic recovery.

But frustration from business owners remains.

And I was just talking to Marissa about this because I didn't realize they're saying that some of the restaurants are losing the last few hours of business. I didn't realize that I thought 11 p.m. was a push from 10 p.m. not in the city, but outside of the city. I didn't realize that they were able to stay open a little bit longer. Yeah, you'd figure that'd be a nice way, at least to help balance a little bit what they're losing with other stuff. But I was talking to somebody, some people associated with restaurants,

and they were trying to explain to me the different rules and variations. For example,

if they have an outdoor tent, a tented area, recovering, if they put three sides up on the tent

to have a heater system in, that's considered indoor dining. You know what? I was wondering what was going to happen with that. If people could just put the heaters up and continue to serve outside. Like heat cannons. Like we've done before with camp out, you know, the camp out for hunger. But no, that's considered indoor at that point. So the city is at an 11 p.m. last call and then they have to be closed by midnight as well. So now

this is across the board in Pennsylvania. The city of Philadelphia will be opening 46 new access

centers on Monday as part of its second phase of rollouts. The access centers are a resource for

working parents who cannot afford child care. Parents are able to drop off their kids at one of the

77 total access sites across the city.

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