Recommendation to Cancel the 2020 Fourth of July Parade to Avoid Mass Gatherings Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. (Recreation 280)
of what you're recommending and why. Sure. Thank you, Madam Mayor. The recommendation by staff is to cancel the 4th of July parade. We understand, as Councilmember Odie said, this is a very important part of our community, but it also draws 60,000 spectators across three miles of our island. And the safety, while it's important event, our community, the safety of our community is first and foremost. Is to. Councilmember Otis point and question we are floating idea of even for the 4th of July of options of what we can do. Even just today, actually, one of my staff brought what I thought was a fabulous idea to do. You know, a lot of people love decorating their homes here for a 4th of July. So we think we could potentially build a virtual event around people decorating or decorating windows, do some kind of contest, create a bike walk map of all of the people participating, have some kind of voting mechanism. So I think we still can do something fun for the 4th of July. I think it's an event of that scale is extremely difficult to pull off. And, you know, it needs to be you need at least 3 to 4 months to to to coordinate an event like that. And with the potential of next wave and things like that, it makes it really difficult to to plan a future event on that scale. It's actually an in-person parade, but we will. Continue to explore options. Well, we look thinking this was if we look forward to hearing more from you and, you know, to our residents, we, um, we know what a popular event this is. And, and of course, we just, you know, it breaks our hearts to have to cancel it. It would break my heart more to see our rate of COVID 19 increasing. And there's just no way responsibly that the governor would even let us invite 60,000 people over for a little parade. But, um, Alameda does it right, and we'll figure out a way to do something. And thank you so much, Ms.. Aldridge. We'll look forward to just hearing more from you. So with that, we've had a motion by Council member Odie to accept the the staff recommendation to cancel the 2024 parade. And. Okay, I'll second with a quick comment. Great. And if you just want to wait for the previous speaker myself in this case to finish and then I will call on you with your hand up. And so. Mr. Dysart. Great, thank you. I think the cancelation of such a cherished event as the 4th of July parade only underscores the dire situation. Alameda and all of us across the world, in fact, are in with this COVID 19. So I think it is right and fitting that that we make this cancelation, however sad this makes us all. Thank you. Okay. The motion has been moved and seconded. Any further discussion from Council Councilmember Vela? I just wanted to thank all of our staff for their work on this and for our Parks and Rec and Park Department. I know that you're constantly trying to come up with different alternatives for us in so many different ways, for so many different things. I love the idea of like a porch contest or something like that in terms of decorating and getting people into the spirit of things. I think if we can find a way to get people to celebrate and do it in a in a responsible way, I'm all for that. And I just wanted to say, I look forward to hearing what they come up with. Everybody start working on ideas for your 4th of July mask. I've got the color combination for you. Uh, okay. Anything further from anyone? Okay. Maybe have a roll call vote, please.