Honorable Mayor and Members of the Hermosa Beach City Council
Regular Meeting of June 23, 2020
Title
Good Evening. Here at City Hall, we continue to focus on our response to COVID-19 and our recovery by meeting each morning to discuss this and other important issues. Since the Council met two weeks ago, we have received amended County Public Health Orders that allowed passive recreation on our beach, reopened our City’s pier and reopened several additional businesses, including hotels and motels, gyms and fitness studios, personal care services and bars.
The County also issued protocols for safely reopening these businesses, and we have shared those on our website. Our City staff has also been working with our bars and restaurants to help them understand these protocols.
While we welcome the reopening our businesses and our economy, we recognize that - as we return to our public spaces - we also face a greater risk of COVID-19 infection. As Beach Cities Health District made clear this evening, we are seeing an uptick in COVID-19 diagnoses.
In Hermosa Beach alone, the number of diagnoses has more than doubled in the past month - reaching 61 diagnoses today. A month ago, Hermosa Beach had the lowest rate of diagnoses among the beach cities. Today it has the highest - 310 diagnoses per 100,000 residents - more than twice the rate it had a month ago. In comparison, Manhattan Beach has 286 diagnoses per 100,000 residents and Redondo Beach has 261 diagnoses per 100,000 residents in today’s report.
Clearly, we must continue to be vigilant. Wearing cloth face coverings is now required whenever you are in close contact with a non-household member. A growing body of scientific research has shown that people with no COVID-19 symptoms or few symptoms can still spread the disease. The use of face coverings, combined with physical distancing and frequent hand washing, will reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Face coverings are critical to keeping those who are around you safe, keeping businesses open and restarting our economy. Washing hands frequently, avoiding crowds and gatherings of families and friends is essential to slowing the spread of COVID-19.
We do want to remind parents that while the fields at Hermosa Beach’s parks are open, playground equipment remains closed. Playground closures are in effect statewide due to the potential for COVID-19 to spread between those in close proximity and from shared surfaces.
The City has installed fencing and signage to remind the public of these closures, but they have been repeatedly torn down and otherwise damaged. We ask all of you to stay off playground equipment for the health of you, your family, and our community. Additionally, tearing down signs and fencing are acts of vandalism and cause the City to incur additional costs for replacing them.
We have heard from our members of the community who were concerned about the return to plastic grocery bags because of the concerns about the spread of COVID-19 by the use or reusable bags. We want to assure you that the City has worked with our local grocers to ensure you can continue to use your reusable bags.
In addition, Governor Newsom’s Executive Order allowing retailers to temporarily provide single-use plastic bags has now expired. Stores must now provide reusable bags and allow customers to bring their own reusable bags. To prevent the virus spread, customers bringing reusable bags to the market will need to bag their own groceries in those reusable bags. We thank everyone for their understanding.