HAMILTON, ON – Yesterday afternoon, Mayor Fred Eisenberger joined Dr. Bart Harvey, Associate Medical Officer of Health, and the City’s Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Director, Paul Johnson, to update media and the community on the City’s response to COVID-19.
As of noon yesterday, there are 43 confirmed cases and 1 death from COVID-19 in Hamilton.
Support from other levels of government:
The City continues to monitor financial supports for residents put forward by the provincial and federal governments. To assist with local understanding of the information, staff are reviewing and compiling the information and the City will be sharing it on its website in the coming days.
Parking enforcement: The City is not currently enforcing payment at parking meters or in the City’s surface parking lots, however, parking offences will still be enforced in circumstances where a significant traffic safety and/or community concern exists. This includes No Stopping and No Parking Offences. Officers will also continue to enforce parking regulations at highly visited public sites. The City is asking the public to please be respectful of our parking enforcement staff who are working hard to keep the community safe.
City golf courses: City golf courses, Chedoke Civic Golf Course and King’s Forest Golf Course, and their respective parking lots, are closed to the public. However, the City will continue to undertake the necessary general maintenance of the courses with the hope that we may be able to open them later this season.
Pedestrian crossing signals: Starting today, some pedestrian signals in Hamilton will be reprogrammed so pedestrians do not need to touch them to activate the crosswalk lights. The reprogrammed signals will be in high priority/high pedestrian areas, such as near local hospitals, urgent care centres and COVID-19 assessment centres. While the reprogramming will ensure the pedestrian lights come on automatically, the enhanced accessible audible crossing will still need to be activated manually by those users who require it. Regular audible guidance will continue as usual. Other signals that require pedestrians to touch them in order to activate (pedestrian crossovers and independent pedestrian signals) will still need to be manually activated.
Recreation programming: We continue to monitor provincial announcements related to the current closure of Ontario schools, which has a connection to our delivery of recreation programming and other activities. At this time, we have decided that we are delaying the start of spring recreation programming by at least two weeks in order to continue to monitor the provincial direction on school closures and ensure that we have time to plan accordingly for the restart of recreation programs and services.
Earth Hour this weekend: With our focus on responding to the COVID-19 emergency, the City will not be promoting this initiative this year, but we welcome the public to still acknowledge it in their own way.
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