With another round of COVID and the resultant mandates and restrictions that come with it potentially on the horizon, one city in California is preemptively pushing back on the expected restrictions with a vote to ban a universal mask and vaccine mandate. That city is Huntington Beach, California, the city council of which just made that vote.
The vote came on Wednesday morning, with the city council having a meeting that lasted long into Tuesday night and then the wee hours of Wednesday morning, only adjouring at 2:48 in the morning. But, by the time the marathon meeting had ended, the proposed declaration to ban a universal mask and vaccine mandate passed by 4 to 3.
Under the new rule, those who test positive for COVID-19 will still be required to wear masks in certain situations, but there will not be a mask mandate for healthy residents, nor a vaccine requirement. The declaration applies to city buildings, not private businesses. The declaration provides, “Individuals, whether at City Hall or in the private sector, should have a right to choose whether to wear a mask or get vaccinated or boosted.”
Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Gracey Van Der Mark introduced the motion at the marathon meeting. In the declaration, Van Der Mark blasted the mask mandates imposed for City Hall and other areas of the city in 2020 and 2021, saying that they “unnecessarily limited the freedoms of the citizens of Huntington Beach — even those who were not around anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 or at risk of any exposure.” Continuing, she added, “The city should ban broad universal mask and vaccine mandates by declaring the city to be a ‘no mask, no vaccine mandate city.‘”
Mayor Van Der Mark also said that the main issue against which the declaration pushes is government overreach, saying, “Government overreach — that’s what it’s about. People who are denied the basic right to work, put food on the table and pay their bills.”
Emphasizing that those who want to wear a mask or get the vaccine to feel safe still can do whatever they want, Mayor Van Der Mark added, “If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. If you want to wear two, three masks, that’s fine. If you want to be vaccinated, boosted. It should be up to you. The government should not impose these broad mandates on us.”
Despite the passage of the declaration, some council members pushed back on the impulse behind it. One, Councilman Dan Kalmick, said, “To say that masks don’t work goes against years and years and years of data. And you can tell that to every paint sprayer, to every surgeon, to everybody in a full Class A hazmat suit.”
Kalmick added, “There was no impetus for this. We’ve received no emails. This was strictly a political maneuver to rile folks up to gain support because these folks are losing support because of their very unpopular positions. This item was a distraction. It just seems like it’s a made up thing. We might as well pass a ban against giants or UFOs or something. It’s just nonsense.“
By Photograph by D Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10971529
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