Park department hopes beach closings will be temporary this summer

La Crosse’s beaches will be closed for a while, and the swimming pools definitely are shut down for the season. 

That’s the call from the city parks department, after a new spike in local COVID-19 cases which was traced partly to Pettibone Beach. 

Park director Jay Odegaard says they counted around 500 people recently at Pettibone. 

He’s hoping that both Pettibone and Black River beaches can be opened again before long. 

Odegaard says it didn’t help that the beaches don’t have lifeguards to try and enforce social distancing. 

But the absence of lifeguards was a personnel decision made well before this year’s pandemic, because those jobs are considered hard to fill.