January 22, 2021 | Vol. XLIII No. 4

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Signal Tribune

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Serving Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos, Wrigley and Signal Hill

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VOL. XLIII NO. 4

January 22, 2021

COVID-19

‘AFTER 34 YEARS, I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS’

MENTAL HEALTH

McKenzie’s Mortuary orders third refrigerated trailer to accomodate overflow

Emma DiMaggio

A

Production Manager

t McKenzie Mortuary Services, the phones never stop ringing. As owner Ken McKenzie welcomes families in mourning, workers are busy collecting faxes, calling cemeteries and making orders. In a back room, embalmed bodies in boxes are stacked on top of each other. The stack is only a few feet shy of the ceiling. The mortuary’s former music room has been converted into storage space for overflow. Out back, a 20-foot refrigerated

Emma DiMaggio | Signal Tribune

Ken McKenzie’s mortuary has reached capacity due to increased deaths due to COVID-19, forcing him to tell families to call back in a week for services.

LB COUNCIL

unit holds more bodies. It’s the third unit that McKenzie has had to order since the pandemic began. “After 34 years, I’ve never seen anything like this,” McKenzie said. “We’re seeing multiple families being wiped out.” He’s handled 138 cases in 15 days. He hasn’t taken any new clients in the past week because of their backlog. People who died in the first week of January are just now being cremated. Earlier this year, he worked with see AT CAPACITY page 3

SIGNAL HILL CELEBRATE CULTURE OR ROOT OUT RACISM?

LB City Council moves to cap third-party food delivery fees at 15%

Digital Editor

Production Manager

see DELIVERY page 6

As the pandemic persists almost a year later, its effects are taking a toll on mental health Karla M. Enriquez

Emma DiMaggio Long Beach restaurant owners may soon see more profit as the Long Beach City Council moved forward with an item that would cap third-party food delivery fees at 15%. The move comes as restaurants across the city remain closed due to rising COVID-19 case numbers. To offset their losses, many restaurant owners turned to third-party delivery apps. Ciaran Gough, who owns The 908 in the Fifth District, said that most restaurants operate with a low profit margin. These profits can be nullified by the cost of using third-party food delivery services. “One would ask, ‘Why use those delivery services?’ Well, the reason why is: you have to, because they have a monopoly on that delivery service,” he said. Third-party food delivery operators like UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates and DoorDash charge a fee to restaurant owners for using their service. Grubhub currently charges 10% on delivery commission and a 3.05% processing fee per transaction. If businesses offer their own delivery

Courtesy Andrea Piacquadio | Pexels.com

Screenshot of Signal Hill Diversity Committee meeting on Jan. 13 | City of Signal Hill

Signal Hill Diversity Committee aims to ‘take temperature’ of community Anita W. Harris Senior Writer

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he City of Signal Hill’s newly formed Diversity Coalition Committee (DCC) met for a second time last week to share ideas on how to achieve its purpose as defined in the City’s Race and Equity Framework, adopted last July. According to that framework, the DCC’s mandate is to “examine the City’s current policies and engage the community on various aspects of race and equity as part of an evolving effort to address systemic racism and bias in the policies and practices of municipal government.” Furthermore, the City’s July 14, 2020 Resolution Standing Up for Equality and Against Systemic Racism calls for the DCC to examine

Come checkout our expanded outdoor dining and carhop service! * Dining Room Closed

the City’s current policies related to policing, municipal operations and city-related events. How to go about accomplishing all that was a matter of debate among the committee’s 20 members during the DCC’s Jan. 13 meeting. As members suggested potential initiatives to create awareness– such as hosting a speaker series, community-listening sessions and a cultural festival– some brought the discussion back to systemic racism. Member Stephen Aguilar agreed, saying, “We do need to take the time to make sure we understand our charge well enough to identify solutions that are going to solve the problems we are meant to solve as opposed to just a series of programs.” see DIVERSITY COMMITTEE page 7

The feelings of hopelessness, anguish, fear and sadness that have accompanied the pandemic and its effects, since it took hold of the nation almost a year ago, are also taking its toll on the mental health of many. In August 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that stated that in late June 2020, symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder grew considerably in the United States in comparison with the same time period the previous year. Representative panel surveys were conducted among adults 18 and over across the country at the end of June, where 40% of those surveyed reported “considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions” associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the report, greater numbers of Black and Hispanic people reported feeling negative mental health symptoms, increased substance use and elevated suicide ideation. A current look at how the pandemic is affecting the mental health of a sample of people living in Los Angeles County can be viewed through USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research’s Understanding Coronavirus in America tracking survey. According to the tracker, which surveyed over 1,000 Los Angeles residents, 37.7% of those surveyed see MENTAL HEALTH page 2

CLOSED DUE TO COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS WE HOPE TO SEE YOU AS SOON AS WE’RE ABLE TO REOPEN.


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