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Recommendation to direct City Manager and all appropriate departments to update the City of Long Beach COVID-19 Data Dashboard to clearly reflect any data sets considered or utilized by our Health Officer in determining Health Orders to ensure transparency and clarity in the decision making process;
Direct City Manager and appropriate staff to report back on our City’s efforts to lobby our federal and state legislature for a robust community focused relief bill that would provide support to our neighbors who are out of work, the non-profits that have supported them, the small businesses that have been completely or partially shut down, and the cities and states that have provided the infrastructure for testing, response and resiliency;
In addition, research and bring back to Council options to advocate for federal legislative action support deferment and forbearance of government backed, Small Business Association (SBA) loans in light of the fiscal impact to small businesses.
DISCUSSION
The COVID 19 pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on Long Beach communities. A recent press release included information that is not accessible to the public on our COVID dashboard. The press release stated “COVID-19 hospitalizations for hospitals that serve Long Beach-area residents have increased 248% from 25 on Nov. 1 to 85 on Nov. 22.” Now an email from the City Manager states that Long Beach area hospitals had 29 COVID patients on Nov 1. We realize that initial numbers may change once confirmations are provided. Our data dashboard (linked above) includes initially reported numbers and confirmed numbers. These numbers had not previously been sited and this benchmark had not previously been discussed as a threshold for additional concern. Additionally, the Health Director estimated that there were 1,600 available hospital beds, but when a community member visits each hospital’s website there are variances that could be explained if we had greater transparency. As...
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