La Cañada’s summer concert series affected by pandemic

Locals’ tradition of crowding into a La Cañada park on Sunday afternoons all summer long to enjoy a free live concert will likely be curtailed, the city manager told the City Council this week.

Noting that the La Cañada Flintridge Chamber of Commerce has already announced the postponement of its annual Memorial Day weekend Fiesta Days due to the coronavirus pandemic, City Manager Mark Alexander said the city-sponsored Music in the Park series will likely have to be canceled throughout June and “possibly more than that.”

The Fiesta Days celebration is tentatively rescheduled to the long Labor Day weekend, assuming government restrictions on public gatherings are lifted by that time. Alexander told the council the popular retro rock ‘n’ roll band Captain Cardiac and the Coronaries, which for many years has kicked off the summer concert series on Memorial Day, will instead be featured on Labor Day if Fiesta Days takes place then.

Alexander addressed the topic during his remarks at the end of the Tuesday night regular meeting of the City Council, attended remotely by all participants and livestreamed on the city’s website.

In a public safety presentation of February and March crime statistics by Capt. Todd Deeds of the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station the council learned that Part One crimes in La Cañada (burglary, robbery, homicide and other serious offenses) were down 36% in February over the same period in 2019.

There were nine residential burglaries reported locally in February and four in March, when the stay-at-home restrictions were put into place, Deeds noted.

An agenda item for the first reading of an ordinance to amend sections of the city’s municipal code related to building, electrical, planning, mechanical and residential codes was pushed off at the request of new City Councilman Rick Gunter, who asked for a couple of weeks so he could give a closer study to the suggested amendments.