During Monday’s city council meeting, Mayor Bessinger talked about a request by Fresno Mayor Lee Brand to have the City of Clovis as a signatory in a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom asking for the reopening of businesses.
Bessinger said that his initial hesitation to sign the letter was because he wanted to bring it to city council first and also because of the wording that talked about code enforcing. He noted that the letter was already sent out, but that he still wanted to inform the city council of his talk with Brand.
“I did have a conversation with Lee (Brand) and I told him that our concern was in expectation that we were going to do code enforcement like the city of Fresno,” Bessinger said. “I can’t see us doing that.”
Councilmember Ashbeck said that it was her belief that the letter was not going to change anything. Ashbeck also said that she wished that this letter would have been a county thing and not just a city letter.
Councilmember Jose Flores said that the City of Clovis was not in the business of code enforcing on business affected by COVID-19.
City Manager Luke Serpa gave a quick brief on the COVID-19 cases in Clovis. Serpa mentioned that the hospitalization and the ICU rates are trending down in the county.
Serpa said that there was a significant drop from the daily new cases of 12 percent in the county two weeks ago to seven and a half percent just last week. He mentioned that even though Fresno County is still in the Purple tier of infections, he expects that within two or three weeks the county will be in the Red tier.
This will mean that restaurants and other businesses will be able to reopen at 25 percent capacity. Serpa also commented that the city shouldn’t get into code enforcement during this time because it will be difficult to police what is a 25 percent capacity.