During their Dec. 20 special meeting, Bethel City Council voted to renew an ongoing series of emergency pandemic mitigation measures. The measures have been in effect since September 2020, and they automatically come up for renewal every two months.
The measures 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. After a single council member voted against them, some of the measures had been overturned last week and were set to permanently expire in January 2021.
Usually, measures in city council require a simple majority to pass. But according to city code, emergency measures like these require a supermajority, which means that a measure needs the vote of six of the seven council members to pass. Council member Mary “Beth” Hessler voted against them last week, and there was also a council member missing from that prior meeting: council member Perry Barr. The vote to renew failed 5 to 1. Hessler has voted against all pandemic mitigation measures since her election in October. She is also the only unvaccinated council member.
But during their Dec. 20 meeting, all seven council members were present and only Hessler voted against the measures. They all passed 6-1.
The renewal of these pandemic measures come at a time when a new variant of the COVID-19 virus, the omicron variant, has already overtaken the delta variant in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The omicron variant is more transmissible than the delta variant and responds less well to the two-dose series of the vaccines. Dr. Ellen Hodges with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation said in the meeting that individuals who have a vaccine plus a booster shot have about 80% protection against infection. According to the CDC, both vaccinated and boosted individuals are much less likely to get seriously ill or die from the omicron variant than unvaccinated individuals.
