Restaurants, employees take another hit
Restaurants were ordered to close for outdoor dining on Wednesday, despite Los Angeles County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Janice Hahn attempting to block the measure. They weren’t the only ones trying to block it — the California Restaurant Association also made an attempt in court. Unfortunately, a judge rejected the request from the group to block LA County from reinstating the ban.
The group said the move would devastate businesses and workers.
The County Board of Supervisors debated a motion to block the ban Tuesday. Barger proposed it and Hahn supported it, but the motion failed to win the full support of the Board.
In addition, “the Los Angeles City Council also voted 11-3 in favor or urging the county to rescind a plan to cut off in-person dining at restaurants for three weeks due to a spike in COVID-19 cases. That was a non-binding vote as the matter falls under the county’s jurisdiction,” according to an ABC7 report.
Despite most restaurants being ordered to stop outdoor dining operations, Pasadena, which has an independent public health department, has decided to allow outdoor dining to continue while virus numbers are assessed.
“We need to balance our growing numbers and the economic hardship of restaurant personnel,” Spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said in a statement obtained by ABC7.
According to their report, Barger said she opposed another stayat-home order and challenged the wisdom of halting dining outside at restaurants — the only way they’ve been able to serve food onsite since the earlier stay-at-home order.
“Barger said only 10% to 15%
of people infected have reported dining out with someone who tested positive, but 50% reported being at a private social gathering with someone who tested positive,” the report says.
So will shutting down outdoor dining help in the long run? With those statistics, it seems that it could help a bit but not much. What will be affected, on the other hand, are the people working in restaurants, who need the income. Personnel will likely be trimmed once more and those who had gone back to work will find themselves jobless for at least three weeks.
What perfect timing — right around the holidays. But that’s the least of their worries. Rent, mortgage and car payments are still coming due. So are utilities and other bills. And what about groceries? It seems the lines at food banks are getting longer and there’s no relief in sight.
We can’t predict when the pandemic is going to end, which is even more frustrating for those who are unemployed or underemployed. The bill collectors haven’t stopped collecting, but for some, income is barely existent, if at all.
The nation has to do better for its residents who are suffering — and so do those bill collectors. These are tough times in which we are living and virtually none of us have faced this type of situation before, but shutting down businesses and reopening them, just to shut them down again doesn’t make sense. There has to be a better way.