CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City of Corpus Christi is cracking down on local restaurants and businesses that might not be taking the Governor's face mask order seriously.
Mayor Joe McComb and Corpus Christi City Manager, Peter Zanoni, talked about that during yesterday's City Council Meeting, saying Health Inspectors, and even Police Officers are being called into action to do compliance checks at local businesses around town.
"We are going to get with the health inspectors and also the police chief and kind of go in and just look around and see if they feel like they're in compliance," said Mayor Joe McComb, City of Corpus Christi.
City Manager, Peter Zanoni, says he's seen several reports on social media showing restaurants and customers clearly not following the Governor's mandatory face mask requirement.
Of course, restaurants are not supposed to be operating at more than 50 percent capacity either, and some are said to be violating that rule as well.
Zanoni says if businesses are found not to be in compliance, they will first get a warning, but if they don't get into compliance after, he says they can and will be fined.
"The goal is not to ticket and fine and come down hard, but rather work as our Police Department does in a community-oriented fashion to help some of these restaurants get into compliance," said City Manager, Peter Zanoni.
Mayor McComb says he has not seen violations in a number of restaurants that he's visited, but lately, he has gotten enough complaints from people about violations taking place. As a result, Mayor McComb is now ordering those places to now recieve vists from the Health Department and local police.
Corpus Christi Police Department Chief Mike Markle has had officers doing surveillance on some of those businesses recently, especially during lunch and dinner time to make sure they are complying with the Governor's face mask order.