In observance of César Chávez Day, all San Diego County public offices, family resource centers, library branches and animal shelters will be closed on Monday, March 31, including for the City of San Diego.
Public transportation, such as MTS and NCTD, will continue to operate its normal weekday schedules.
What’s closed:
- Fallbrook Community Center
- Lakeside Community Center
- Spring Valley Community Center
- Spring Valley Gymnasium
- 4S Ranch Recreation Office only (all parks will be open)
- Community Teen Centers
- Valley Center Community Hall and Adams Park Pool
- All County public health clinics
What’s opened:
- County parks, campgrounds and neighborhood day-use parks
- Essential services including law enforcement and emergency animal control response
What’s closed:
- All city libraries
- All city recreation centers and city pools
- All administrative offices
What’s opened:
- Curbside trash, recyclables and organic waste will operate its normal weekday schedules
- Golf courses
- All skate parks and plazas and the Pacific Highlands Ranch Pump Track
- Dog off-leash areas
- Emergency services
City-wide parking will also not be enforced on Monday for the following:
- Parking meters
- Time restrictions for parking on streets
- Yellow zones
- Posted street-sweeping routes
Red zones, white zones, and blue zones are enforced at all times.
All offices will resume normal business hours on Tuesday, April 1.
Chávez is credited with improving work and quality of life conditions for immigrant farm workers in Central California. Alongside Dolores Hureta he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers Union.
Chavez first gained prominence through a strike against table grape growers in the Kern County city of Delano, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield.
The strike was called by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, on Sept. 8, 1965. The predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association joined the strike eight days later. The two groups merged in August 1966 to create the United Farm Workers.
The strike and boycott ended in 1970 after 26 table grape growers signed contracts with the UFW.
César Chávez Day is a state holiday that happens every March 31. It celebrates the late civil rights activist’s birthday, who died on April 23, 1993 at the age of 60.
César Chávez Day is a federal commemorative holiday, first proclaimed by then-President Barack Obama in 2014, and not a federal holiday.
Then-Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation in 2000 making the March 31 anniversary of Chávez’s birth in 1927 a state holiday. When March 31 falls on a Sunday, the holiday is observed on the following Monday.
