Public Media for Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Bethel City Council to once again consider pandemic measures during a special meeting on Dec. 20

The chambers have new plexiglass partitions for council members and more room for social distancing for meeting attendees.
Elyssa Loughlin
/
KYUK
On Dec. 20, Bethel city council will hold a special meeting to consider a series of four pandemic emergency measures.

On Dec. 20, Bethel City Council will hold a special meeting to consider a series of four pandemic emergency measures. The mayor called the meeting after two of the measures failed to get extended when a single council member voted against them during their last regular meeting on Dec. 14. The other two measures were tabled.

The measures on tonight’s agenda are a statement declaring the pandemic an emergency, the city-wide mask mandate, and a mandate that requires unvaccinated people traveling to Bethel to either quarantine or test for the virus. There’s also a measure that allows households and businesses to accrue a certain amount of debt before the city shuts off their water services.

The measures automatically come up for renewal every two months and have been in place since Sept. 2020. No council member had ever voted against them until Councilmember Mary “Beth” Hessler was elected to the council in October of this year.

Against the backdrop of the City of Bethel instating a vaccine mandate, Hessler ran for a council seat as the only unvaccinated candidate. She openly opposed vaccine mandates and pandemic mitigation measures and says that she prefers “recommendations to mandates.” She won a seat, and has voted against the COVID-19 emergency measures each time they’ve come up as the only dissenting voice.

During the last regular Bethel City Council meeting, her dissent won out. Hessler’s single vote overturned the testing mandate and statement declaring the pandemic an emergency. Although Hessler was the only council member to vote against them, emergency mandates require a supermajority of six out of seven council members to vote in the affirmative. During the meeting, one council member was missing: Perry Barr. Barr was attending a meeting for the Bethel Family Clinic, of which he is board president.

Before the council could move onto the next measures, council member Michelle DeWitt stepped in and requested to table them.

The two overturned measure are now set to end on Jan. 9., but the other two measures that didn’t get overturned, the masking mandate and the water shutoff prevention ordinance, also are set to expire on Jan. 9. Mayor Mark Springer called a special meeting for Dec. 20, according to City Clerk Lori Strickler.

If all council members attend the Dec. 20 meeting, and the six council members who have historically supported the measures do so again, the measures would pass. But it’s not clear that that will be the case.

Councilmember Barr said in a phone call with KYUK that he plans to attend the meeting, but he’s on the fence about voting in favor of the measures.

“We've been with this mandate for so long, there are other communities that have lifted their mask mandate. But I'm also concerned about the new variant that's being brought into Alaska and coming out to our area, and probably providing for or easier infections. I feel for the safety of the community. Another concern is we have the Christmas holidays coming up. And that's where a lot of people congregate and get together,” said Barr.

Councilmember Rose “Sugar” Henderson said during last week’s meeting that although she supports the mandates, she thinks there will come a time to move on from them. But she clarified in a phone call that she doesn’t think that time is now.

“For now I'm gonna support it. I know how important it is. I do believe in it. And I just want everybody to be healthy, and we don't need any more deaths,” said Henderson.

During the most recent regular city council meeting on Dec. 14, Dr. Ellen Hodges of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation called-in. She advocated for the mask mandate, saying that masks are an effective way to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

As of last week, the Y-K Delta’s COVID-19 case rate was 1.8 times higher than the national case rate and 2.5 times higher than the state’s.

The Bethel City Council special meeting will take place on Dec. 20 at 6:30 p.m. KYUK will not be broadcasting the meeting, but you can tune in to the meeting viaZoom.

Olivia was a News Reporter for KYUK from 2020-2022.
Related Content