COUNTY TO ASK FOR MORE REOPENING CONTROL
Supervisors to send letter to Newsom, also extend eviction ban; sitting on beach allowed
For months, county leaders have largely waited for the governor to sign off on reopening local businesses and activities, but supervisors pushed for greater local control Tuesday.
On a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Nathan Fletcher in opposition, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved sending a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking for the authority to set the pace of community reinvigoration on their own.
The decision came as a new level of freedom appeared on local beaches.
For the first time in months, people were allowed to lay on the sand, though hazy skies and cold water seemed to
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keep the crowds thin.
Driven by coronavirus contagion concerns, relaxing on the sand has been verboten, but that restriction went away Tuesday provided social-distancing requirements were still met. It was a relief for lifeguards who have found themselves having to patrol the sand to keep people moving, a significantly different activity than scanning the surf zone for swimmers in distress.
“We can refocus on the water again instead of the people on the beach,” said Evan Dean, an Encinitas lifeguard.
More beach-focused freedoms may be on the near horizon.
Another 4-1 vote along the same lines has the supervisors inviting local cities to consider allowing full beach access and reopening parking lots that have remained closed since coastal exercise activities resumed in late April. The board also unanimously extended a moratorium on evictions through June 30.
The county health department reported 120 new coronavirus cases and announced seven additional deaths Tuesday. The latest pandemic losses included two women and five men who ranged in age from 46 to 94. All but one had an underlying health condition.
To date, 7,674 residents have tested positive for the novel coronavirus and 276 have died. An estimated 5,750 have recovered.
While those totals continue to grow every day, they’re following a smooth trajectory that suggests, for the moment at least, massive public health efforts have been able to keep the pandemic under control in San Diego County.
Supervisors looked Tuesday to make the case with the governor that the numbers justify a greater level of local control over how and when additional businesses reopen.
Tuesday’s vote authorized a letter to Newsom that asks for authority to decide when to open businesses including hotels, gyms, wineries, breweries, churches at full capacity and with safe distancing, theme parks, some youth sports and swimming pools, arts and culture museums, charter fishing and recreational boating.
The request will include safe reopening plans for each type of business and local COVID-19 data that would trigger re-tightening of public health restrictions. Fletcher said he opposed asking for the accelerated reopening proposals because he thought it more prudent to “stay the course” of opening in a safe, responsible and systematic way that would not risk the progress the county has made to slow the spread of the virus.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, told supervisors at the meeting Tuesday that the two biggest hospital groups, Scripps Health and Sharp Healthcare, have had — and continued to have — concerns about an accelerated reopening, including whether the hospitals have enough personal protective equipment to handle a surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Wooten said county officials were listening to and communicating with the health care systems, which together have handled more than half of the county’s presumed COVID-19 hospitalizations.
So far, she added, the pace of the local pandemic has not tripped any of the 13 “triggers” put in place when the county was granted a variance to begin a more aggressive reopening schedule that started with socially-distanced dining at local restaurants and retail stores and eventually expanded to barber shops and salons.
Wooten said at the meeting that the county had been collecting data that might help indicate whether the county’s reopening was allowing the virus to spread. She said contact tracers had been asking specific questions about whether people had been involved in the industries that were reopening.
Wooten also said epidemiologists would be on the lookout in the next couple of weeks for cases related to protests and civil unrest that broke out last week in communities throughout the county, presenting an opportunity for person-toperson transmission of the virus.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in San Diego County to express anger about police brutality following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody last week after an officer pinned him down by kneeling on his neck for nearly 9 minutes.
Hotels and charter fishing boats
Many of the residents who made public comments at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday pointed to the county’s apparently flattened epidemiological curve as they called for loosened restrictions on hotel, boat rental and sport fishing businesses.
Operators of San Diego County hotels, which have been closed for overnight leisure stays for more than two months, appealed to county supervisors Tuesday to allow them to reopen. The industry, which employs some 31,400, has seen a 60 percent loss in jobs since the start of the coronavirus lockdown in mid-march, according to the San Diego County Hotel-motel Association.
Namara Mercer, executive director of the hotel association said, “Opening hotels for leisure guests will be less of a risk than housing essential workers … People are ready to visit hotels. For them, staying at a hotel is essential to their relationships, mental health and creating a sense of normalcy. Our hotels want to be a part of the solution, not put into a position where they have to violate the public health order.”
Under the county’s public health order, hotels are only permitted to house essential workers, and in a letter sent more than a week ago to the association, Wooten reminded the association that the order remains in place.
“We have recently discovered that many hotels and lodging establishments are not only out of compliance with legal requirements but are advertising for tourism-related business and ‘staycations,’” Wooten wrote “Please help us ensure that all hotels and other lodging establishments are aware of the requirements of the State and Local Orders so that we can lower the transmission of COVID-19.”
County supervisors also heard pleas from operators of boat rental and sport fishing businesses, who said they already have sanitation and social-distancing protocols in place to restart their operations immediately.
“We are at a crossroads in sustaining the San Diego fleet,” said Ken Franke, president of the Sportfishing Association of California. “The San Diego fleet, as you know, has been shut down. The remainder of the season is expected to run through the first week of October. They have very little time to operate the minimum of
70 days required to make enough money to survive through the winter and get to the next season.
“…We need immediate action to survive. Please make the decision to activate your fleet before it is added to the victim list.”
Beaches
Those who went to the beaches Tuesday could linger without face coverings, provided they stayed within household groupings set at least 6 feet away from other groups.
For the most part, people seemed to obey the restrictions.
The sand at Ocean Beach in San Diego was dotted with beach blankets and umbrellas generally spaced at least 6 feet away from each other. But several families could be seen in closer proximity as their children played. Most beachgoers weren’t wearing masks.
La Mesa resident Anais Sotello, who grew up in Ocean Beach, sat on a bench overlooking the water with her friend instead of venturing out on the sand.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” she said. “I love coming to the beach — it’s just a good way to spend your day — but with everything going, I think it’s iffy… I think they’re trying to (be safe), but then again there’s that pull to go back to your normal life, so it’s kind of hard.”
At La Jolla Shores, a bit farther up the coast, Santee resident Terrance Jones said he arrived prepared to keep moving then go home and was pleasantly surprised to learn he and his 2-year-old son could sit down and relax, which they did.
“The beach is not crowded at all, not like a normal day,” Jones said.
The continued closure of beach parking lots clearly influenced the crowds that surfaced on the shore Tuesday. For now, though it’s easier to linger, getting to the sand often still requires circling through beach-adjacent neighborhoods for a parking spot.
Drivers might have arrived irritated, but Lola Swank, a lifeguard in Oceanside, said that didn’t translate to problems down by the water.
“We’ve had a great day,” Swank said.
Staff writeres Phil Diehl, Lauren Mapp, Lori Weisberg, Lindsay Winkley and Jonathan Wosen contributed to this report.
morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com