Name: LA County to reopen breweries, wineries and cardrooms outdoors next week
Brand: dailynews.com
SKU: dailynews-com-16
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

LA County to reopen breweries, wineries and cardrooms outdoors next week

preview

By | | The Daily BreezeCasino cardrooms, breweries and wineries will be allowed to reopen outdoors in Los Angeles County with an array of modifications next week, a split Board of Supervisors decided late in their meeting Tuesday Sept. 29.The decision to allow the additional sectors to reopen, which was already allowed by the state, came down to a 3-2 vote with Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sheila Kuehl dissenting.“It concerns me that this comes before us with insufficient notification and we’ve done well in terms of hanging together and I would like that to continue to be the case,” Ridley-Thomas said.Kuehl said she was disappointed the vote was taken at the end of Tuesday’s meeting.“The decision on wineries and breweries was made against the guidance of our Director of Public Health,” Kuehl said in a statement. “I voted no because I honestly don’t feel that it’s safe to open these places, there was no need to take this action this week and I would have preferred more public discussion and further discussion with Dr. Ferrer.”Breweries and wineries will be allowed to reopen outdoors next week, based on state guidelines, as long as they partner with a third-party permitted food vendor and operate at a limited capacity. At first, they will require reservations. Participants at outdoor card tables must wear face masks at all time and will not be allowed to eat or drink at the table, according to state guidelines.“It was important for me that we started having these discussion in open session,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who along with Supervisor Kathryn Barger put the motion forward Tuesday. Supervisor Hilda Solis asked for an amendment including cardrooms. “We’ve had a lot of public comment on this, on casinos, the cardrooms and breweries. I just feel like we only meet every two weeks. I feel like this is the way we need to work.”Frances Cannon, executive director of the Los Angeles Brewers Guild, which represents 95 breweries, said the group was “thrilled” with the county Board of Supervisors decision to align with the state health order.“Our advocacy had ramped up significantly in the last few weeks, and we want to commend Supervisor Hahn and her team for the hours of direct communication they had with us including a nearly two-hour digital face-to-face meeting with her staff and an in-person brewery visit from Supervisor Hahn herself,” Cannon said. “We understand that there are so many other important things going on in our county, but we really do appreciate this effort to save Los Angeles breweries.”In the weeks after Labor Day, Los Angeles County did not experience the type of surge in new coronavirus cases that followed Memorial Day and July 4 weekend, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the board on Tuesday.With case rates, deaths and hospitalizations all declining — in some cases dipping below levels seen in the spring — Ferrer said the county was not out of the woods and will continue to move cautiously.“Now more than three weeks removed from the holiday, our rates are lower than they were before,” Ferrer said. However, Ferrer did not recommend the county open additional sectors — even though they were already allowed by the state.The news was a sigh of relief for those who have fretted in recent weeks that case rates might surge. And they have gone up slightly. Last week, metrics tracked by the county .L.A. County is still listed in the state’s highest-risk category for COVID-19 under its four-tier economic recovery roadmap. The county is in the “purple” tier, signifying continued widespread transmission of the virus locally. Last week, the county met both of the state’s criteria for advancing to the next stage, the “red” tier — meeting the required seven-day average testing positivity rate and the number of new cases per 100,000 residents. The red tier would loosen restrictions on more businesses, allowing operations including movie theaters and churches to open at limited capacity.Counties, however, must meet the criteria for two consecutive weeks before officially moving up in the state’s chart. The state updates the chart every Tuesday, and the latest update showed that Los Angeles County’s average rate of new cases per 100,000 rose to 7.3, putting it back squarely into Tier 1.In raw numbers, the county also did not meet the state’s threshold the previous week, but the state adjusts the case rate based on the amount of testing being done locally. That adjustment brought into red-tier territory last week, but failed to do so this week.L.A. County on Tuesday reported 905 new cases and 39 deaths associated with the coronavirus, bringing the death toll to 6,551 people and total cases to 269,284. Currently hospitalized were 714 people, 34% in an intensive care unit. Long Beach separately on Tuesday reported 57 new cases, now up to 11,900, and one additional death making 246 total deaths in the city, which operates its own health department. Pasadena, meanwhile, reported three new cases, up to 2,568 cases total, and one additional death making 123 total deaths.After Memorial Day, case numbers increased by about 100 per day countywide, while after the Fourth of July, they increased more than 1,000 per day, Ferrer said.But that hasn’t happened in recent weeks. In fact, case rates, deaths and hospitalizations have all declined compared to the beginning of September. Average deaths were now down from 36 to 29. Cases were averaging less than 1,000 per day now. And hospitalizations were now below 800.The positive news Tuesday did not mean, however, that Ferrer recommended loosening “Safer at Home” rules for additional business sectors and public venues this week, and the supervisors at first did not press her department to do so.Supervisors did, however, to allow waivers to open schools for pre-Kindergarten to 2nd grade, prioritizing those schools with the highest percentage of students that qualify for free or reduce priced meals and no more than 30 schools per week.On the possible business reopenings, Hahn urged her colleagues to consider allowing those currently allowed under state guidance such as indoor nail salons, indoor malls, family entertainment centers and outdoor cardrooms to reopen, saying she wanted to throw those businesses a life line of sorts.“I do kind of feel like we are at a tipping point in terms of businesses and jobs and people’s livelihoods out there,” Hahn said. “I do know that every week that goes by when we don’t allow a small percentage of businesses to begin to reopen, at least to slowly get back on their feet, that we are putting another nail in their coffins.”Hahn also suggested the county allow a work-around for breweries and wineries to open outdoors as long as they partner with a food vendor to serve as a restaurant. Such rules have been applied to other counties but not yet for L.A. County.Hahn said she only supported reopening breweries outdoors, but not bars — but there was a question put to legal counsel whether that would be permissible.Kuehl said she supported indoor nail salons reopening — and possibly movie theaters — but not breweries. Ridley-Thomas urged a continued cautious approach and did not say either way how he felt about reopening more sectors this week.“I know some people could get sick and die for every bit we reopen,” Hahn said, “but that’s a responsibility we are all taking together. We’re threading the needle between people’s livelihood and their health. It’s not a situation any of us wanted to be in.”The state’s Health and Human Services director, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said Tuesday he is hopeful that Los Angeles County will soon advance to the next tier and be able to reopen more businesses.“Many large counties have been able to move from purple into red,” Ghaly said. “We’ve seen that already. L.A. County met the threshold for red for one week. They missed it this week, and they may be on the road to meeting it again very soon.”City News Service contributed to this report.&nbsp;for The Localist, our daily email newsletter with handpicked stories relevant to where you live. .We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Get the latest news delivered daily!Follow UsMost PopularClose

By | | The Daily BreezeCasino cardrooms, breweries and wineries will be allowed to reopen outdoors in Los Angeles County with an array of modifications next week, a split Board of Supervisors decided late in their meeting Tuesday Sept. 29.The decision to allow the additional sectors to reopen, which was already allowed by the state, came down to a 3-2 vote with Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sheila Kuehl dissenting.“It concerns me that this comes before us with insufficient notification and we’ve done well in terms of hanging together and I would like that to continue to be the case,”...

public

gqlshare

David Rosenfeld

Reporting the news in LA since 1911. Subscribe here to support local journalism: http://checkout.dailynews.com.

LA County to reopen breweries, wineries and cardrooms outdoors next week

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS