Concord City Manager Valerie Barone today declared a local state of emergency in response to the public health crisis resulting from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The City also opened its emergency operations center (EOC) at the lowest activation level to provide coordination of the City’s response to the pandemic.
Declaring a local state of emergency allows the City Manager to adjust and reallocate City resources as needed, and it allows the City to access state and federal resources and apply for reimbursement of costs related to responding to this pandemic. The Concord City Council is expected to ratify this proclamation next week.
“Our community is facing an unprecedented public health crisis that requires swift action,” said Concord Mayor Tim McGallian. “We are working closely with our local and state partners to determine how best to keep our residents and our staff safe. Although these measures may feel burdensome, we must do our part to encourage the social distancing that is required to slow the spread of this disease and preserve critical care capacity for those who need it most.”
In an extraordinary effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the City of Concord will implement the following, effective immediately:
- Cancel all indoor and outdoor City-sponsored programs, classes, activities and events through May 1.
- Suspend all preschool programs through May 1
- Cancel all indoor and outdoor City facility rentals through May 1.
- Close certain facilities to the public: Centre Concord, Willow Pass Center, and Concord Community Pool
- Limit access to other public buildings, including the Police Department, City Hall, and the Senior Center, to adhere to 6-foot social distancing mandates for the health and safety of the public and City employees
- Cancel the farmers’ market at Todos Santos Plaza through May 1
- Cancel all non-essential public meetings
The City will regularly reevaluate its COVID-19 response measures, and they may be modified or prolonged as needed.
City Council and Planning Commission meetings will continue. However, agendas will be limited to essential business only, and access to the Council Chamber will be limited in order to adhere to the 6-foot social distancing guidelines set forth by the California Department of Public Health. City staff is also evaluating options for remote participation (i.e. teleconferencing) by the Council as well as the public as an alternative to in-person participation.
The Diablo Creek Golf Course will remain open until further notice. City Parks and open space remain accessible during daylight hours; however, residents are reminded they must observe social distancing in accordance with the Governor’s Executive Order.
City leaders are meeting continually to evaluate this public health crisis and will continue to implement measures consistent with County and State public health mandates and guidelines.
Members of the public are strongly urged to follow public health guidelines: wash hands frequently, maintain 6-foot social distancing, and avoid large gatherings.
And just in case nobody noticed…the sky is falling, too.
This is getting ridiculous. Do government officials think we’re all idiots? That we can’t decide for ourselves what’s safe and what to avoid. Why don’t we all just slather ourselves in hand sanitizer (which, by the way, won’t do anything to combat a virus), wrap ourselves in plastic, and hide in the closet for the next two months? Wake me when it’s over.
When you are out and about do you noticed people around you? You may be intelligent, use common sense and be aware that there other people in the world. Not everyone is that way.
Based on you being incredulous about these safety measures, it’s safe on the City of Concord’s part to assume you’re incapable of deciding what’s safe and what to avoid.
All that any expert across the world are asking, especially those in places that are far ahead of us in the viral growth curve, is for us to stay home for two months. That is literally what we are being asked to do. So yes, let’s.
>>All that any expert across the world are asking, especially those in places that are far ahead of us in the viral growth curve, is for us to *stay home for two months*. That is literally what we are being asked to do. So yes, let’s.
Sure! So, uh, who’s gonna be paying my rent for the next 2 months…?
Based on the idiots panicking and hoarding toilet paper, I would say there are more than enough idiots around – politicians and the general public.
These career bureaucrats that work for the city of Concord need to try and justify these 250,000 a year pay packages they get, that’s what’s going on here. Apparently city officials in Concord – who don’t do much all day generally – have had some meetings and they have dramatically decided to shut down all of Concord’s services, even though the City of Concord’s has almost no services to speak of. Pretty laughable.
In this press release they city officials are saying nobody can now come to city hall. Keep out of city hall they say. Concord has a city hall? Since when? We don’t have a city hall, or a library, or any recreational facilities to speak of – the few we have were built over 40 years ago. Concord has nothing but a ludicrously overfunded Police Department , a PD that schemes to try and arrest anything that moves. The slogan of our city ought to be “Come to Concord and get Arrested. We Arrest better than any city in California, and we do it in the most expensive way possible”. This is ALL Concord does anymore – we arrest people mostly. That’s what happens when weak city officials – and an equally weak city council – allow a bunch of people that work at the PD to run the city behind the scenes. You put cops in charge of a city – any city – and the city will turn into a gigantic arrest and jail machine – that’s what Concord is today. It’s a gigantic arrest and jail machine and the people that do the arresting are making 300,000 a year. Concord is a sick city, a failed city at every level.
Alright now,you asked for it,you got it,how many of you complainers are going down there ASAP and getting tested??(sound of crickets)Yea,that’s what I thought……
Pay attention—you can’t get tested if there are no test kits. That is why we are in this mess in the United States. WHO offered test kits, the brilliant minds in the WH came together and said, no…we’ll do our own..result…not nearly enough tests done to date.
Also just generally a bad idea to go rushing off to the doctor if you think you’ve got it. You’ll just expose everyone else there who’s already sick.
If you call your doctor, they most likely will tell you to self quarantine (And if you’re a healthy adult, to quit being such a baby).
Wash your hands w/soap and water, cough into your elbow. That’s the drill for anyone who isn’t elderly or immunocompromised.
….or worse, you may only have sniffles and now you’re exposing yourself to those that may have COVID.
Up your Vitamin C, D & A intake.
Take a few swigs of Apple Cider so that your pH will be more Alkaline as opposed to the majority who are acidic from the SAD, Standard American Diet.
Toilet Paper is the least of peoples worries.
Where is all the thankful liberals?
That is trick question and a contradiction of terms.
This mass hysteria is causing hoarding of all essential items and needs to be put to a halt immediately.
The mentally ill are running amuck in grocery stores, it’s a really sad sight to view in person. Then they stand in a very long line and cough n sneeze at each other.
GET HELP!
I agree with you but when I hit your second paragraph I broke out into laughter that I really needed.Thank you.
who let the horses out after the barn door got closed
Still rolling my eyes at all the people freaking out so hard they’re treating it like nuclear radiation. You can’t cough at all in public any more, for ANY reason. Folks look at you like you’ve just stabbed someone in the neck. Sorry, man, I have a pollen allergy, it makes my throat itchy. I promise you won’t come down with tuberculosis because my throat itches.
Like, y’all know there are about a thousand other things than coronavirus that can make you cough, right? Everyone who coughs does not have the same thing. FFS.
The City of Concord has almost no services anymore, recreation programs are a total joke, the city also has no recreational facilities to speak of – nothing has been built in 40 years.
Concord’s City Hall is a tiny pathetic little rat-trap. Does anybody in Concord even know where City Hall is? It’s so tiny people logically can’t visualize Concord City Hall in their minds. I can’t and I’ve lived in Concord since 1950.
The library? Most residents avoid our dreary library, built in 1959 when Concord had a population of 35,000. The library, I should mention, was dated and dreary when I was to going to high school in the late 60’s. For 60 years we’ve had a piece of junk library yet nobody working for the city today, or in the past 40 years, can figure out how to build a new library, one the community can be proud of.
All the City of Concord is – today – is a giant police department that “pretends” to be a city. Even though Concord has very moderate levels of crime – an average of 3 murders per year for the last 15 years – astronomical amounts of money are being plowed into the PD to battle what amounts to be a pretend crime wave. The Concord PD is overstaffed, over funded, and it has become an unbelievable drain on city finances – to the point that Concord is facing a 13 million deficit soon (much of this deficit is being created by high paying PD desk jobs).
While Concord has crappy services and our public buildings – except for the PD station – are all dumps we do have highly paid public employees in Concord, among the highest paid in the bay area. Concord pays 30,000 more per employee than Walnut Creek is paying their employees. The average wage and benefit package of a city of Concord employee is higher than city employees make in SF, Oakland, LA, San Diego, Fresno. City of Concord worker pay packages are also higher than city workers make in Palm Springs, and Beverly Hills too. (see Transparent California) When it comes to pay packages for city workers Concord is a world class city.
Concord, in fact, is awash in 250K a year managers, the pay and benefit packages of these manager types – none of whom can figure out how to build a new library or a badly needed community gym – is so staggering you simply cannot believe the scope of the gravy train going on the City of Concord.
Significantly these over paid city manager types do almost nothing all day – they can’t do much since they have allowed the people running the PD to take all the tax revenue that flows into the city (the people running the PD have been rolling the city manager and the council for so many years they are known as the “Wyatt Earp Gang).
So while it’s with great fanfare the city of Concord is cancelling all these alleged services we don’t even have in Concord because of this flu virus, I think the city manager and our council should know that many Concord residents have noticed the stunning lack of services in our city. Many have also noticed the run down crappy public buildings, the bare bones recreational programs. Pleasant Hill, one city over, has a new city hall, a new library is on the way, and they have got fabulous recreation programs – compared to Concord.
The people running the city today, Valerie Barrone, and these spendthrifts that sit on the council (see Hoffmiester, McGallian, and Obringer) – who have allowed the pay packages of city employees to balloon into the stratosphere – all deserve pink slips. If these folks running the city were all laid off nobody would notice because none of these people do much of anything, they just flap their jaws and go through the motions of doing “work”
And so many clueless voters keep the gravy train rolling. There’s no justification for the exorbitant pay and benefit packages. None.
I can’t argue with the fact that there are some PD managers that are a complete waste of space and money. But to state that the PD is an arresting machine is ludicrous! Cops are told to NOT arrest people, to STOP proactive enforcement, and and now being mandated to work 12-hour shifts for 7 days in a row.
And these cops will have to paid for the time they work, and are not allowed to work. The PD is completely mismanaged,. Swanger and his 3 Captains have got to go.
Barone is useless and clueless at her job, and the city council members fail to realize that she works for them. They should dump her with Swanger leaving and start fresh with someone who will do their job and turn this city around.
It isn’t fair to blame the cops who are being told who to arrest and who not to arrest, nor is it smart to have Concord PD officers working at the BART station. Bart is BART’s problem, not CPD’s issue.
I urge you to volunteer at the PD and see the inner workings first hand, or get a cop job there. You will see first hand the low morale, and management tomfoolery.
notice how they have not given us any updates on the status of the hiring process for the new chief???????????????
Went to Safeway (Treat & Clayton) Friday afternoon for some mozzarella cheese – was amazed at the totally crowded store! People at every register in long lines with their carts overflowing. Heard complaints of no T.P. in stock. People looking a little rattled out there – and this is just the start,
Across the street at Staples you can find TP-Kleenex-paper towels all stacked in the front of the store. I was in there yesterday afternoon so they are set up for sales.
“adhere to 6-foot social distancing mandates for the health and safety of the public and City employees” -I thought I read 3 feet.
It started out 3 feet, just like the cancelled events started out a 1,000 people limit.
Would have been nice if we had an organization that could have helped prepare for this type of event. Oh wait, we did then impotus disbanded it and cut funding to the CDC
https://youtu.be/ZSKH_C2YbpY
Mike, sounds like you need to grab a piece of tissue that you’re hoarding.
That’s not true.
Don’t you think forcing your employees to work 12-hour shifts 7-days in a row will weaken their immune systems and leave them MORE likely to become infected?
I know the PD managers don’t care because they don’t leave the building (IF they even show up for work).
you may not think the virus is a real thing but the panic will be. we are one week away from a full lock-down like Italy.
Experts: The best way to protect yourself is to stay 6 feet away from people.
Americans: Quickly rushed to the grocery store to stand inches away from hundreds of other people to buy out all the toilet paper.
….. caught myself thinking about “back in the day” before people had toilet paper or even enough Sears-Roebuck catalogues to tear up. Guess they used large green leaves? Okay…. which led to my going out on the back deck and eyeballing what I would have to do to climb up the giant Silver Maple tree out there and …… which led to “I wonder whether there are gleaner groups which would harvest some leaves FOR us”! 🙄🥴😂
Well, keep breathing, Claycord friends!
I guess you haven’t been camping enough, Antler.😉 Maybe there’s some other species with big green or at least pliable leaves within a nice walking distance that would be more easily accessible. Just make sure you know what poison oak looks like so you can stay clear of that option. I’ve seen the outcome of that mistake, and the remainder of the trip wasn’t any fun at all for the poor girl.
Gee, there really could be a use for all of the “voter information”, if it wasn’t so glossy. Who knew?
Left a place a bit ago after having a nice breakfast. There was a table with 9 people across from me. By their conversation and the apparel of 2; it was most likely they were city employees.
They were complaining that since the city is stopping gatherings and using the close proximity rules; why should they have to go to work in their offices when they sit among others in a small space. Their complaints continued and continued. They were clearly annoying other customers.
Another customer from a different table had some guts… Asked them why they were so concerned about being at work. They said because they are “Cramped” near one another… Dude then asked then why they were all sitting here elbow to elbow cramped at one table.
Man! Were they Pi$$ed… Yes…. I laughed.
Why close down the Farmers Market? It’s a reliable source of fresh local produce, it’s much easier to maintain social distance there than in a brick& mortar enclosed store, and closing creates unnecessary financial hardship for the sellers. I don’t get why they thought this was necessary. Anyone know?
What do you get when you take the word panic,and add the word dem to the middle of it?
panDEMic