During last night’s meeting, Bethel City Council overturned the mandate that declares the pandemic to be a state of emergency, along with its quarantine and testing mandate. It tabled two more pandemic mitigation measures until next meeting. It also did not approve a measure to allot more funding to the Community Action Grant committee. It heard a recommendation from the Bethel City Manager to renew a liquor license for Fili’s Pizza and a marijuana retail license for ALASKABuds, but took no action.
Bethel City Council’s pandemic mitigation measures come up for reconsideration every two months. There’s the city-wide mask mandate and a measure 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.
Since the council struck down the quarantine and testing mandate, after Jan. 9, unvaccinated people will no longer be required to either test for COVID-19 or quarantine before going about their business in town.
These mandates did not pass because a supermajority of six out of seven council members is required to pass emergency mandates, and the council didn’t have a supermajority last night. One council member, Perry Barr, who has always voted to pass these mandates was not in attendance. Councilmember Mary “Beth” Hessler voted against the mandates.
These measures had gone unopposed since their initial adoption in Sept. 2020. That is, until Hessler was elected in October of this year. She’s voted against them each time they’ve come up for renewal. She’s also against vaccine mandates and is herself unvaccinated.
Before the council could move onto whether to renew the mask mandate and the water shutoff prevention mandate, council member Michelle DeWitt intervened. She made a motion that passed to table those two mandates to the next meeting. However, the next meeting isn’t until Jan. 11 and the mandates will expire on Jan. 9.
Under city code, the council could not reconsider the testing mandate and the state of emergency mandate during that meeting without the dissenting council member’s approval, and Hessler did not give it.
“I feel that we should give recommendations and not mandates. That's my feeling, just saying,” said Hessler.
Although council member Rose “Sugar” Henderson voted in favor of the two overturned mandates, she gave hints that her viewpoint on mandatory masking may be starting to shift.
“You know, I am looking for a closure to all of this. And at some point, we have to find that closure. Cities are moving on, states are moving on, and we're sitting here. And don't get me wrong. I agree with what we're doing at this point. I just know it's gonna come to a point where people are gonna say, 'Okay, it's time to move on,'” said Henderson.
Dr. Ellen Hodges, the chief of staff at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, also joined the meeting through Zoom to share her thoughts. She said that after vaccination, masking is the second-best tool people have to stave off community spread of COVID-19. And she said that COVID-19 is important to prevent because unlike getting a cold and getting over it, terrible symptoms of COVID-19 can stick around for a long time and cause life-altering damage.
“That is one of the worst scourges of this diseases, this long COVID. About 60% of patients can experience this. It is associated with a brain fog, where people can't think clearly, they can't perform the job duties that they need to perform, any of them can't work. Again, they have fatigue, they have chest pain, shortness of breath, especially with any amount of exertion,” said Hodges.
During the meeting the council also heard recommendations from the city manager to renew the liquor license for Fili’s Pizza and the marijuana retail license for ALASKABuds. Some council members hinted at taking issue with renewing Fili’s Pizza's license, but did not mention ALASKABuds. Council can protest the liquor license renewal during the next meeting. If it does, their dissent will be sent to Alaska’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. The board has final say over whether it will renew the license, but takes municipal protestation into consideration.
And finally, a proposal to allot 20% of the tax revenue generated from marijuana sales to the Community Action Grant committee was overturned 6-0. Council members agreed that the committee has enough funding, but the council member who sits on that committee, Council member Barr, was not in attendance. Barr rushed into the room just as the meeting adjourned.
A previous version of this story said Bethel City Council could not re-consider the overturned mandates. That's incorrect. Bethel City Council cannot not re-consider overturned mandates during the meeting in which they were overturned. They can re-consider them during future meetings under different serial numbers.
