‘We will not comply’: Rexburg joins list of Idaho places where anti-maskers show force
REXBURG — The Rexburg City Council met to discuss a possible mask mandate Wednesday evening, but amid yelling from members of the public, city leaders decided not to pursue the ordinance for now.
Rexburg Mayor Jerry Merrill said during the meeting that discussing a mask mandate was brought up because Gov. Brad Little moved Idaho back to a modified Stage 2 of its Idaho Rebounds reopening plan.
As the council and mayor talked about face coverings, they were interrupted countless times by protesters outside the City Hall building and on the meeting audio. Even before the discussion started and the council addressed other city matters, one protester demanded over the audio feed that the council would hurry up and get to the mask mandate.
During the mask discussion, the protesters would break into chants, such as “We will not comply!” They frequently and loudly expressed frustration at not being let inside, although the council was not holding a public hearing.
Merrill decided the council would make decisions regarding face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus at a later time.
READ THE PROPOSED CITY ORDINANCE HERE
“Our end goal here is to keep our businesses open … and be thriving,” Merrill said. “We’re trying to make sure those are the kinds of things we’re considering here.”
Madison County is in the critical risk — the highest level — of Eastern Idaho Public Health’s COVID-19 Regional Response Plan. On Wednesday, the county had the second-most amount of new COVID-19 cases in the health district, with 71 for a grand total of 3,590. There are currently 273 active cases and seven deaths.
In early October, The New York Times reported that the Rexburg micropolitan area had the second-greatest COVID-19 outbreak in the entire country.
The county has been under a health district mandate since Sept. 14 that requires people to wear a face covering when the person is in a public place and other nonhousehold members are present, and physical distancing of 6 feet cannot be maintained.
“I think the effort here is to have something that helps enforce theirs (EIPH’s mandate),” Merrill said. “I think we need to try to establish some law, an order, according to the law that we already have in place.”
Outside of the building, Jenny Porter, a local small-business owner, led a protest where about 100 people gathered. She says nobody should take people’s liberties, freedoms or rights away, and claimed that a mask mandate somehow does that.
“I am a concerned citizen is all. I feel like we’re not being heard. I want to be heard. This is starting to make me mad,” she said before the meeting. “It’s affecting my life, and I don’t think it’s right for somebody else to tell me how to manage my own health (or) how to run my business. It’s not American.”