A Message From The City Manager
By Shohreh Dupuis
Dear Laguna Beach Community,
As we begin 2022, our highest priority continues to be the health and safety of our community, businesses, visitors, and City staff. To this end, the City’s Executive Team is closely monitoring the recent increase in COVID-19 cases, monitoring the County’s updates regarding the Omicron variant, reviewing CDC and CalOSHA updates, and implementing any additional operational solutions to ensure the health and safety of the public and our employees while continuing to perform our essential work.
Testing is a critical part of keeping our community and employees safe. We encourage anyone with COVID-19 symptoms to stay home and get tested and we are providing onsite testing for City employees. For local and area COVID-19 testing resources, please visit our new COVID-19 resource page on our website at lagunabeachcity.net/covid-19.
As you know, the State of California has extended the indoor mask mandate until Feb. 15, 2022. On Tuesday, the City Council decided all Commission, Committee, Boards and City Council meetings will be held virtually with no in-person participation through the end of February (including interviews and appointments on Feb. 8) and the City Council’s Strategic Planning Session has been moved to March 4. City staff is also being encouraged to hold all meetings virtually and to clean shared surfaces and equipment often. Mask wearing at City facilities is mandatory regardless of vaccination status and distancing protocols will be observed. In-person access to the Laguna Beach Animal Shelter is currently by appointment only by calling 949-497-3552. There are no additional impacts to City services at this point.
Over the last two years, our community has shown great perseverance in working through the many difficulties of this pandemic. Even in the face of these challenges, there are great accomplishments over the past year to acknowledge. If you haven’t seen it already, I invite you to take a look at all we did together in our 2021 Key Accomplishments found on our City Website at lagunabeachcity.net. I remain grateful for all the hard work and resilience of our City Team and community partners as we continue to serve the Laguna Beach community.
The recent surge in cases will require us to pivot yet again over the next few weeks. Though our fight against COVID-19 isn’t over, I look forward to a great year and all we hope to achieve as we move forward through this together.
Shohreh assumed the role of City Manager in June. She joined Laguna Beach as an assistant city manager in 2016 and lives in South Laguna.
