{"id":8519,"date":"2020-08-19T16:28:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T21:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/?p=8519"},"modified":"2020-08-23T15:49:06","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T20:49:06","slug":"mask-mandate-west-plains-city-council-holds-public-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/politics\/government\/mask-mandate-west-plains-city-council-holds-public-forum-20200819","title":{"rendered":"Mask Mandate: West Plains City Council Holds Public Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>West Plains, Mo. \u2013 <\/strong>The West Plains City Council met at the West Plains Civic Center on Monday, August 17, 2020, to hear the general public&#8217;s opinions on having a mask mandate for the city. The majority of the public who spoke were against the mask mandate.<\/p>\n<h3>Government and Business<\/h3>\n<p>Byron who talked at the forum communicated a popular thinking which was<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Private business should have a right to allow all customers in their stores without a mandate.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Byron at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>One person went so far as to say<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The mask ordinance is pure government overreach.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Stacy at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A possible solution is<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. It&#8217;s your choice.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Jason at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But if you&#8217;re set on having the government telling us what to do, we should go with what Byron said<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A decision of this magnitude should be left up to the citizens of Howell County, not dictated to us by the City Council.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Byron at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Or, in other words,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(Mandatory mask-wearing is getting) shoved down our throats. If anything, I would much rather (have it) taken to a vote of the people instead.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Fred at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We have to be careful of the precedent we set because we do not know how long it will stand.<\/p>\n<h3>Citizens of West Plains Speak Out<\/h3>\n<p>The world is not new to pandemics, whether it be the Black Plague or Ebola.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The definition of pandemic is as follows: an outbreak of disease that occurs over a wide geographic area that effects an exceptionally high proportion of the population. What number is deemed an exceptionally high proportion of the population? As of August 16, 2020, the total positive cases in the United States are 5,340,232 which equals 1.61% of the total population. Total of deaths are 168,696 which is .05% of the population. I ask you today, is 1.61% of the total population is an exceptionally high number? I don&#8217;t think it is.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Matt at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is pushed farther home by the statistics that Oakley gave<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(In context of the corona virus deaths) Two deaths in Howell County every loss of life is tragic that is absolutely true. Also, note there have been three homicides in West Plains this year.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Oakley at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We do not want Mr. Chase&#8217;s story of what might happen if this mandate is passed to become a reality.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My neighbor who lives next door, if you have this mandate, they&#8217;re having a party and he&#8217;s got ten people over there and they&#8217;re not wearing a mask. I&#8217;m calling 911. It&#8217;s going to end up dividing more and more people.<\/p>\n<footer class=\"blockquote-footer\">Mr. Chase at <cite title=\"Source Title\">Mask Mandate Forum<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That sounds similar to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/lifestyle\/humorous-video-shows-the-absurdity-of-social-distancing-20200513\">Absurdity of Social Distancing<\/a>. One person stated his beliefs on what the city government&#8217;s role is.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The city government&#8217;s role is to represent us and to have our best interests at heart, at it&#8217;s not to dictate from the top down&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One person who was for the mandate spoke on how the nursing homes cannot reopen to the public until new cases are on the decline or stop. Another point she made was that the people inside the\u00a0nursing homes are in isolation without a choice.<\/p>\n<p>There was also a question on whether or not this is an emergency mandate because the rules for passing an emergency mandate is different than those for passing a normal mandate. In the end, this is not an emergency mandate even though it had an emergency in the title they did change it. To read the bill, <a href=\"https:\/\/westplains.net\/west-plains-draft-face-mask-ordinance-07292020\/\">go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As a reminder to everyone how the government likes to expand.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A saying in politics is &#8220;never let a good crisis go to waste.&#8221; It&#8217;s an opportunity for them to take power and do things they couldn&#8217;t do otherwise without opposition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you want to watch the full forum, you can watch it on Facebook <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CityOfWestPlains\/videos\/327703035249084\/\">here for part one<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CityOfWestPlains\/videos\/691753478364218\/\">here for part two<\/a> since we could not find it on any other platforms.<\/p>\n<p>The ordinance will come into effect on August 28th, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ozarkradionews.com\/local-news\/city-of-west-plains-releases-proposed-mask-ordinance\">published documents<\/a>, if the council passes it on the 24th of August at their regular meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The West Plains City Council met at the West Plains Civic Center on August 17, 2020, to hear the general public&#8217;s opinions on having a mask mandate for the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[241,219,201,264],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8519"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8539,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions\/8539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}