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City emphasizes need to get outside, just do it safely

Beaches, and recreation services, like pool openings, were highlights of the City of Delta’s eighth virtual town hall session Thursday morning.
Town hall
Delta's eighth virtual town hall was held Thursday morning with DPD Chief Neil Dubord, Mayor George Harvie and City Manager Sean McGill.

Beaches, and recreation services, like pool openings, were highlights of the City of Delta’s eighth virtual town hall session Thursday morning.

Mayor George Harvie was joined by Delta police Chief Neil Dubord and City Manager Sean McGill to update the community on the cities COVID-19 pandemic response and take questions from the public posed through Facebook and Instagram.

One of the first questions was what is the city doing to ensure that the communities’ beaches are not crowded like was seen at some points last weekend in Vancouver.

“Certainly we saw the beaches crowded in Vancouver as the nice weather came out,” said Dubord. “Yet when you saw some of the drone footage of the pictures, people were in fact social distancing. When we look at our beaches here, the nice weather will bring more people out. Delta police have no direct responsibility in relation to making sure everyone keeps a physical distance, however, we do have some social influence and there is no doubt that we can work with Delta bylaws, Metro parks to be able to suggest people, if groups are getting too tight, that they continue to give themselves some space. As far as issuing tickets or taking enforcement, we won’t be going there at all.”

Harvie emphasized the need to allow people access to parks and outdoor spaces.

“We need to allow people to get outside – confining in their house just isn’t going to happen,” said Harvie. “We want to see people continue to be active…it’s great for their mental health, but at the same time recognizing that we have to have physical separation…six feet apart as best we can for many months to come.”

McGill said Delta has created a parks ambassador program to help educate residents.

“We find that education works really well, just talking with people in a casual way and it has been very well received,” said McGill.

Another question brought up was whether pools, either indoor or outdoor, would be open in Delta this summer as well as waterslides.

“Waterslides are within the Tsawwassen First Nation so they will have to contact them, but as for our pools…it is wait and see,” said Harvie. “We still have not received direction from the province on opening those up. Those directions will be coming, but how many people you can let into a pool. I think outdoor pools will be easier to manage than indoor, but we need firm direction from the province. I’d like to see them open, especially with the good weather, but we still have to do it in a way that protects people help.”

Harvie reiterated that Delta is currently working to ensure that all recreation facilities that are currently closed are ready to go once they have direction from the province.

“They have to be safe for our employees as well as our clients and customers,” he said. “This will be all in another phase. This is going to be slow, but when the province says we have the standards we will be prepared to go and open.”

McGill said staff have been working with council on plans to re-open facilities including traffic flows, the amount of people allowed in the buildings, and sanitation protocols.

“We will have a plan in place for every single facility in Delta for when we are allowed to open and what that looks like,” said McGill. “There will be a change of people allowed in the building, their flow within the building, cleaning stations, so we are working on physical distancing and maintaining all the barriers to get there.”