In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, City Administrator signed a Proclamation of a Local Emergency on March 12th 2020, which the City Council ratified at a Special City Council Meeting held on March 13th, 2020. The Monterey County Department of Health issued a shelter-in-place order on March 17th, 2020 and the State of California issued its own order on March 19.
In April 2020 Governor Newsom issued a Pandemic Roadmap that laid out stages for the reopening of the State. Currently, Monterey County is in Stage 2.5 of the Resilience Roadmap, though certain restrictions on indoor dining, bars, gyms, malls, and houses of worship have been reinstituted due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases.
The Roadmap stipulates that large-scale gatherings, such as the City’s special events, will be allowed to occur in Stage 4 (Attachment 1) at the end of the Stay-at-Home (or shelter in palace order) order at which time therapeutics will have been developed. The City’s remaining events for 2020 include: Sandcastle Contest, Pumpkin Roll, Homecoming, City Birthday Parade, Veteran’s Day Ceremony, the Homecrafters’ Marketplace and the annual Holiday Celebration. These events range in attendance from 75 at the Veteran’s Day Ceremony to over 1,000 at the Homecrafters’ Marketplace.
This spring the City cancelled the Breakfast with the Bunny event, Memorial Day Ceremony, and annual 4th of July celebration in alignment with the shelter-in-place order that prohibited gatherings of 10 people or more and out of an abundance of caution for the safety of residents and visitors. In addition, Car Week events scheduled to be held peninsula wide in August were cancelled, including those to be held in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Understanding that the U.S. is still in the throes of the first surge of COVID-19, California is currently seeing a significant surge in new cases, and that Monterey County is also experiencing an increase in cases locally, and that there is currently no vaccine, it is unlikely that the State will move into Stage 4 to allow large gatherings prior to the end of the calendar year.
With the understanding that it takes anywhere from three to six months to organize any of the City’s special events, staff recommends that all Fall/Winter City events be cancelled through the end of the calendar year 2020. While it is a disappointment to cancel events, doing so sooner rather than later allows staff to proactively communicate with community groups and volunteers who help to support City events, as well as event attendees, who have already been making inquiries about the City’s Fall/Winter events.
Staff also recommends that the Community Activities Commission work on new approaches to engage with the community to work on creative ways to mark the cancelled City events. For example during the 4th of July weekend volunteers used Community Activities decorations to commemorate the holiday.