No mask mandate for Waterbury
December 7, 2021 | By Lisa Scagliotti
Members of the public attend the December 6 Waterbury Select Board meeting for a discussion of whether the town would adopt a mask mandate to address the spread of COVID-19. Select Board members Dani Kehlmann (seated in front, left) and Katie Martin (seated in front, right) discuss. Screenshot from ORCA Media recording.
UPDATE: This story was updated on Dec. 10.
The Waterbury Select Board heard from local residents and a number of residents from other Vermont towns Monday night before deciding not to take any action regarding a local mask mandate to help curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Twenty-one months into the global pandemic, the state legislature and Gov. Phil Scott recently granted authority to local communities across Vermont to enact their own measures to require mask-wearing in public indoor spaces.The move comes as cases, hospitalizations and deaths have surged due to the Delta variant of the virus.
In Waterbury, cases have more than doubled since the end of July when the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus began its surge. State Health Department data record 438 cases for Waterbury since the start of the pandemic, 239 of those have been identified since the beginning of August.
Local schools are seeing a surge with Brookside Primary School having the most cases in the Harwood Union School District. A Tuesday morning announcement of two more cases brings the school’s case total to 14 for the school year, six of those within the first week of December. Overall the district has logged 38 cases as of Tuesday morning.
One-by-one city councils and select boards are taking up the mask mandate question and Waterbury’s board was among those Monday to put it on their meeting agenda.
Business owners object
The board heard from 16 speakers, most of whom spoke in opposition to the mandate. They included local business owners including Rick Blake, owner of Billings Mobil, and Gayle Brown from Cold Hollow Cider Mill.
“I had to defend myself. My employees were put on the spot every single day,” Blake said, referring to earlier in the pandemic when the state and town called for mask-wearing. “We’re not the mask police.”
Brown said she is trying to weather the pandemic on both a personal and business level by not judging others and their choices. And, she said, wearing a mask at work is not practical. “I can’t fathom wearing a mask, seven days a week and 90 hours a week that my husband and I work in our business,” she told the board. “I please ask you to be the change with no discrimination and judgment … to help this community begin to move forward.”
Waterbury Fire Chief Gary Dillon said he thinks it’s appropriate to encourage people to wear masks but not to mandate it. “This makes absolutely no sense,” he said of a mandate that would require shoppers in stores to be masked while allowing diners in a bar or restaurant to be unmasked in public.
Proponents point to children
Carol McNair, a Waterbury Center resident and teacher, pointed out that people can choose to spend time in restaurants or bars but shopping for groceries is more of a necessity.
She offered her experience where she said she sees firsthand how COVID-19 is affecting students who are missing school after either testing positive or being a close contact of someone with COVID-19.
“We have to get COVID under control to protect our most vulnerable people, which includes our children,” she said, noting that online learning options are not in place this year as schools emphasize in-person learning. “Kids who are at home are often alone. They feel lost. They feel isolated and often scared…. Last year we wore masks, and last year I had no students in my class who had to quarantine because of COVID.”
Robert Dabrowski said he works for the state of Vermont in health operations. He quoted state statistics on the recent surge of COVID-19 cases with more than 3,200 cases last weekend, 70 to 80 people hospitalized daily, and a growing shortage of intensive care unit beds statewide.
“We’re seeing about 1-2 pediatric hospitalizations every day. Before the Delta variant, there were zero,” he said. “We forget that masks are there to protect others. I have three kids under 4 that can’t get vaccinated. There’s still a lot of people who need the added protection of masks.”
Waterbury Center resident Sue Minter said she strongly supported a mask rule. “We are at a really serious moment in this global pandemic and we really are a state at a tipping point because what we do now as individuals and a community is going to affect the future course of this virus,” she said. “The more opportunities we give the virus to spread the more people it will infect.”
In all, only three speakers supported a mask mandate. About 40 people were in attendance at the meeting with about half online over Zoom and the rest in person in the Steele Community Room. Some who spoke included individuals who said they lived in other communities including Barre, Hinesburg and Warren.
One was Paul Vallerand of Barre, who said he plans to run for the Vermont Senate in 2022. He ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for a Washington County Senate seat in 2020. He said the dangers of mask-wearing outweigh any minimal benefits masks might offer and said there is a “human cost” to mask-wearing.
He referenced a Brown University study that found that “children born during the pandemic have seen precipitous drops in their IQ rates.” The study did find lower IQ scores in children in 2020 and 2021 but it did not involve mask-wearing by children. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend indoor mask-wearing for children age 2 and up.) It suggests that both prenatal factors and decreased parental and peer attention and interaction are impacting child development during the pandemic.
Board steers clear
Town Manager Bill Shepeluk prepared a draft resolution for the board’s discussion. The board did not propose a motion that would have called for a yes or no vote. After hearing public comments, board members each weighed in on how they preferred to proceed.
Board member Dani Kehlmann said she was comfortable holding off on taking action now because “our town is doing really well. Our town has not shown transmission or severe illness rates that other towns have, based on the information that I have.”
Board member Katie Martin agreed that the decision should be left to individual businesses. “If you don’t like what the business has in place, then don’t shop there. But don’t slander them on social media,” she said.
Board member Mike Bard said he was “very conflicted” by the mandate question. Masking I think is a good thing but I also think it’s a personal choice,” he said. “I wear a mask, usually.”
Bard and the others said they support businesses deciding mask policies. “We go down a slippery slope by requiring a mask mandate because what we’re going to do is create more conflicts, more fights in stores. That's something I just don’t want to see.”
Board Chair Mark Frier, an owner of The Reservoir pub, stepped aside for the discussion and asked Vice Chair Chris Viens to run the mask-discussion portion of the meeting.
Viens thanked the public for their comments and for keeping the discussion civil despite disagreements. He said he didn’t think the board should enact a mandate that would affect local businesses. “It’s not the board’s position to dictate what to do with their businesses,” he said.
After board members concluded that they would take no action, Shepeluk offered his thoughts to the discussion. He said he did not want to offer a position on the issue but he wanted to emphasize that the lack of a town action leaves the mask question up to individual businesses. He asked that members of the public comply with whatever policies businesses opt to put in place. So if a business requires masks of patrons and individuals disagree with that choice, “Please respect them,” Shepeluk said, “or don’t go in and make a scene. Be respectful.”
Reports coming in on Tuesday from other communities that took up the mask issue Monday included Waitsfield’s Select Board unanimously approving a mandate, according to the Valley Reporter. The Montpelier City Council approved a mandate this week, as reported by the Times-Argus. Meanwhile, boards in Stowe and Morrisville decided against issuing mandates, according to the Stowe Reporter and the News & Citizen’s reports. In Moretown, the selectboard voted to require either masks or proof of vaccination only for events held a the town hall building.
Other communities with mandates approved include Burlington and Williston. VTDigger has begun tracking mask mandate decisions on an interactive map on its website.
Prior to Monday’s meeting, Revitalizing Waterbury and Waterbury Roundabout polled members of the business community and readers respectively on the question of mask mandates. RW’s survey found 56% of its 83 respondents in favor; 78% of Waterbury Roundabout’s 201 replies were supportive.
ORCA Media records Waterbury Select Board meetings. The Dec. 6 video can be viewed online at orcamedia.net.