#De Blasio says plan to bring back indoor dining could arrive ‘this week’

After months of delays and public health worries, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday that City Hall and Gov. Andrew Cuomo may strike a deal “this week” over a plan to bring indoor dining back to the Big Apple.

Hizzoner said the discussions with Cuomo have been “productive” as officials look to reopen industries that were shuttered in the battle to contain the coronavirus pandemic — but added that key details, including those around enforcement, are still being hashed out.

“We all need to come to an agreement on what will be safe, what the standards will be,” de Blasio told reporters during his daily press conference.

“We do enforcement here on the ground, and our resources are being stretched in a lot of different directions,” he continued. “We’ll have to figure out a way that we feel confident about the enforcement.”

Indoor dining cannot begin again in New York City without Cuomo’s say-so under the state’s emergency coronavirus measures.

And Cuomo has repeatedly said he has been unwilling to provide the permission slip because he does not believe that city officials have a sufficient plan to inspect restaurants and enforce social distancing rules, calling for a task force with as many as 4,000 police officers dedicated to the job.

He’s even argued — despite evidence to the contrary — that social distancing violations are more frequent and more gratuitous in the five boroughs than elsewhere in the Empire State, where indoor dining has been allowed for weeks.

“If we have the enforcement mechanism in place, then we can talk about opening restaurants,” Cuomo said during a news conference from his Manhattan office on Tuesday. “It would be negligent and reckless to open indoor dining, knowing that you have issues in upstate New York, knowing that compliance is going to be a problem.”

Those objections emerged in recent weeks as public health officials linked a series of devastating COVID-19 outbreaks in other parts of the country to the resumption of indoor service in restaurants, bars and night clubs — which city officials have pointed to as their own rationale for tapping the brakes on reopening plans.

The delays and lack of clear guidance have deeply frustrated restaurant and bar owners who are struggling to survive under the city’s limited al fresco dining programs — and say they need the revenues from indoor dining to stay in business.

Some eateries have filed suit to try and force Cuomo — and by extension, de Blasio — to act.

De Blasio acknowledged the building anger Wednesday.

“We’re trying our best to see if there’s some way to give some clarity to the restaurant industry so they have some option to keep going,” he said.