Highlights for this week

• **NEW** Childcare for Essential Workers—The Central Coast YMCA has established child care for children of essential workers in South Monterey County. See the KICK Kiosk slide for details, pricing, and the sliding scale of fees.
   
• Youth Mental Health Resources—Here is an article on Supporting Teenagers and Young Adults During the Coronavirus Crisis. It is also available here in Spanish.
   
• Food—Gonzales Community Presbyterian Church Food Pantry location: Community Church Education Building at 4th and Day Streets. Weekly distribution on Saturdays at 10:00 AM. The Food Bank for Monterey County will host its regular monthly distribution of food at St. Theodore’s Catholic Church today, Thursday, April 9, from 9:30 to 10:30 AM. We will notify you immediately of additional monthly distributions as they are scheduled.
  • Look out for the City of Gonzales’ Little Free Pantries to go up across the community in the coming days. This is an opportunity for neighbors to help neighbors. Take what you need and leave what you can. City of Gonzales Public Works Department staff will be monitoring and cleaning the pantries every few days. We encourage the public to maintain social distancing measures and wipe down any item they take or leave.
     
• Clothing—While the Community Church Clothing Closet is temporarily closed, persons needing an emergency delivery of clothing can call 831-596-6315.
   
• Shelter:
  • Homeowners: During the declared state-of-emergency, many mortgage companies and banks are offering temporary help with managing your mortgage payments. Here is a guide to Coronavirus mortgage relief options.
  • Renters: Governor Newsom has signed an Executive Order that gives renters certain protections from eviction during the state of emergency. **New Information** California Attorney General Bacerra has an important message for renters, urging them to act now to preserve their rights. Read it here.
     
• Energy—PG&E is providing additional support for customers experiencing hardships as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have placed a moratorium on service disconnections for non-payment until further notice. Learn more here.
   
• Staying Connected—The City of Gonzales continues to offer FREE WiFi hotspots and two years of FREE service at drive-through events for Gonzales residents. (See slide for dates, times, and documents to bring)
   
• Safety—Stay at Home! If you do not work in an essential job, stay at home. If you work in an essential industry but can work from home, our county order has been updated to mandate thatyou do work from home. This is the best thing you can do to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Do not put yourself at risk of being a burden to our overtaxed medical system by exposing yourself to the virus.
   
• Education—The Monterey County Office of Education has announced that students will not be able to return to school for the remainder of the 2019/2020 school year. This does not mean that school is over for the year. Keep in contact with your child’s school and teachers for instructions on how to continue their education for the remainder of the school year.
   
• Community—Your city leaders and city staff need input from you! We need to know what are your pressing needs. We need to know what questions you have so that we can get important information to the community. We need to understand how you are doing. Please send us an email to COVID19@ci.gonzales.ca.us with questions, comments, concerns, and anything you want to share. We want to hear from you!
   
• Recreation & Community Activities—Please note that all parks in Gonzales are closed. Our recreation department has a calendar of activities and digital resources they are providing while assisting you in keeping up with social distancing guidelines. See the slide for details.
   
• Census 2020—Please complete a Census 2020 survey for your household. You can do it online, by mail, and by telephone in over 13 languages. If you did not receive an invitation to respond to the Census, you can submit a survey for your household by going to the Census website here. It is important to the community of Gonzales that EVERY person in Gonzales is counted.