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The Palm Springs City Council in a special meeting Tuesday directed City Manager David Ready to order the closure of every nonessential business. The emergency order is expected to become active at 7 a.m. on Wednesday after he and the city attorney write itTuesday afternoon.

Councilmembers also unanimously agreed to direct Ready to issue a shelter-in-place order.

The order mirrors action taken earlier this week in the Bay Area, which allows 21 types of essential businesses to remain open. Restaurants will no longer be able to serve dine-in customers, although takeout and delivery can continue.

Businesses that are allowed to remain open need to institute a 6-foot buffer distance between people indoors. The emergency orders will need to be ratified on Thursday in the regularly scheduled city council meeting.

The council also requested that all residents avoid nonessential contact.

These steps were taken to increase social distancing and slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has already infected nearly 200,000 people worldwide, according to a presentation given to the council by Assistant City Manager Marcus Fuller.

Mayor Geoff Kors said law enforcement will not be arresting business owners for staying open at this time, instead allowing several days for the police to go into the community to educate them on the action.

Ready was instructed to make the order effective until April 2. At a meeting on that day, the city council will review the situation and extend the order as necessary.

Mayor Pro Tem Christy Holstege also asked staff to look into what funds and other economic actions, such as tax relief, the city can offer local businesses and residents as the local economy stalls. The council will ask the Coachella Valley Association of Governments if it could organize nearby cities to take similar measures.

On Monday, Riverside County Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser ordered a prohibition on all gatherings of more than 10 people, effective through April 30.

Also on Monday, six counties across the Bay Area in California issued a “shelter in place” order for all residents – requiring roughly 6.7 million people to stay in their homes not to leave their homes – in an attempt to slow the coronavirus outbreak.

For the next three weeks, people living in San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties will be restricted from all “non-essential travel” by “foot, bicycle, scooter, automobile, or public transit” outside their homes. Most businesses will be forced to close until April 7.

According to the order issued Monday by the city and county of San Francisco, "essential businesses" include health care operations; grocery stores, certified farmers' markets and food banks; businesses that provide food, shelter and social services for lower-income people; newspapers, television, radio and other media services; gas stations and auto supply and repair shops; banks; hardware stores, and other services.

Ready had ordered all bars closed on Sunday after Gov. Gavin Newsom requested similar measures earlier in the day, including asking all Californians age 65 or older to practice extreme social isolation in an aggressive attempt to stem the exponential increase in the number of coronavirus cases

Also at Tuesday's meeting, Palm Springs officials discussed curtailing the council's own nonessential business in order to focus on the city's response to the virus. Council members said an updated agenda would be published prior to Thursday's meeting, and it would likely include dropping discussion or votes on items such as an animal ordinance, a sustainability plan and a bike-share program.

The council members said they would discuss sending a letter to area tribes with still-open casinos on Thursday and dispatched Ready to inform them in advance that such a letter was likely on its way. The city does not have jurisdiction over sovereign tribes, so this would simply be a request.

"I think it's been a failure of leadership from the federal government, from the state government and from the county that we are here now having to make really hard decisions for our community," Holstege said in calling for the city's directive for Ready.