Beginning with its first meeting of the New Year, the Riverside City Council will return to virtual public meetings, with officials citing the need for precautions amid a potential omicron COVID-19 surge.
The council’s Jan. 4 meeting will be livestreamed, as will the remaining meetings in January, after which officials will reassess circumstances to determine whether in-person meetings should resume.
Between April and December 2020, council members held virtual meetings, with a couple of exceptions — for a few weeks in the early summer and early fall of that year, when in-person attendance was permitted under stringent guidelines.
However, the council went back to online broadcasts during the governor’s public health lockdowns under the tiered system that was then in place for counties.
The Riverside County Department of Public Health has most recently documented a total 432 COVID-related hospitalizations countywide, less than a third of the roughly 1,500 cases recorded during the surge a year ago.
City spokesman Phil Pitchford pointed to national trends involving the omicron variant as the principal reason for the council’s precautions.
Meetings can be viewed at www.WatchRiverside.com, and public comments can be submitted to council members via the E-comment component of agendas, which can be found at riversideca.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx.