At a special meeting held on Friday, June 19, the Cottonwood City Council voted 4-3 to not mandate masks in public.
Mayor Tim Elinski, along with Councilwoman Debbie Wilden and Councilman Ruben Jauregui, were the dissenting votes.
However, Elinski, immediately after the vote, announced that he as mayor would be implementing a proclamation with the same effect anyway.
“As much as I really hate the word ‘mandate,’ and if you put the word ‘government’ in front of it I really hate it,” Elinski said. “As much as I don’t like government mandates, I don’t think it’s really worked for governments to say ‘we recommend.’”
Elinski’s announcement that a proclamation would be in place even after the council voted against the resolution was met with immediate condemnation from the members of the council who had opposed the measure.
“In protest, I’m not participating in this body until it’s removed,” Vice Mayor Michael Mathews said.
“If you do that, you should have just done the proclamation, not ask council for our opinion,” Council Member Jackie Nairn said, joining Mathews in protest.
This decision comes after an executive order from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey gave cities and towns authority over whether to mandate masks on Wednesday, June 17.
“A county, city or town may, based on conditions in its jurisdiction, adopt policies regarding the wearing of face coverings in public for the purpose of mitigating the spread of COVID-19,” Ducey’s order reads. “Any enforcement of such a policy shall focus first on educating and working to promote best practices to accomplish the goal of mitigation.”
The order grants the authority to councils and board, but not necessarily mayors acting alone.
In the past several weeks, COVID-19 cases in Arizona have seen spikes, with multiple days in June breaking the record for most new cases in a single day. As of Friday, the Verde Valley has had 118 total confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, an increase of 20 infections in the past week, or 22.7%.
The text of the proclamation, in part, is as follows:
“Effective immediately, and for the primary purpose of protecting the lives and health of the most vulnerable among us — including the elderly and those with serious underlying health conditions — all persons within the city of Cottonwood over the age of 3 shall, except when objectively unfeasible …, wear face coverings that are designed and worn to cover both the nose and mouth whenever such person is in a close public setting ….
“This proclamation and order shall be effective for 30 days, unless terminated, modified or extended by subsequent, superseding action by the mayor, governor or legislature.”
Where the council’s order that was discussed and rejected included language allowing for a maximum penalty of $250, that clause was removed from the mayor’s proclamation.
Cottonwood City Manager Ron Corbin said that he did not anticipate law enforcement arresting anyone for violating this ordinance.
However, the proclamation from the mayor removed any language referring to enforcement. There is no penalty in the mayor’s order.
Before the vote, members of the community spoke up with opinions either in favor or opposition to the measure. Opponents focused on arguments that requiring masks would be a threat to civil liberties and doubt about the efficacy of masks, while proponents insisted that the threat was high enough to require a significant response and argued in favor of communal action to help the greater good.
“If someone would have told me three months ago that I would be standing in front of my mayor and city councilmen, asking for you elected officials to uphold my God- given right to breathe fresh air, I would have thought they were crazy,” Cindy Lowell said. “[I am here] to uphold my, my children’s, and hundreds of other community members, our God-given right to breathe fresh air everywhere we go, uninhibited by a mask.”
Dr. Leon Pontikes, chief medical officer at Verde Valley Medical Center, spoke to the council via Zoom and argued that based on his understanding of the medical threat, masks were a worthwhile sacrifice to make to protect against a much more dangerous risk.
“When there isn’t a lot of data to go on, we are sometimes left swimming in the dark. When that happens, the general principles within medicine are [that] if we are to err in any direction, we are to err on the side of caution, as long as going in that direction doesn’t cause any harm,” Pontikes said.”
Pontikes also pointed to several scientific studies comparing rates of spread in different parts of the world, comparing neighboring counties that did or did not enact mask restrictions, which suggest that masks greatly reduce the spread of the virus, sometimes even more than the impact of social distancing.
Christian Oliva del Rio, the president of the Cottonwood Chamber of Commerce, told the council that based on surveys of local businesses, owners were mostly split on the issue, though he noted that businesses were already requiring employees to abide by it in accordance with statewide orders.
Elinski argued that even though he ended up overruling the opinions of members of the council, holding the meeting was a worthwhile use of the council and city’s time, by giving members of the public the opportunity to express their views.
“I think it’s very important the council had an opportunity to cast its vote,” Elinski wrote in an email to Larson Newspapers.
“With reopening our economy and focusing on bringing tourist dollars to the area in focused ad and marketing campaigns, we need to couple these efforts with more stringent methods of reducing COVID-19 transmission,” Elinski wrote.
When asked if he would have overruled council if the vote had been 5-2 or 6-1 against him, he simply wrote, “?”
When asked if residents should trust him to not ignore future votes he may lose, Elinksi wrote, “As I said before, it is under very rare and extreme circumstances that a mayor is authorized to enact emergency proclamations.”
If Nairn and Mathews are joined in protest and council cannot reach quorum to govern the city, Elinski wrote, “I am confident we will have a quorum present to perform our responsibilities, of which there are many. In the unlikely event we do not reach quorum, there are provisions in state statute for how we move forward.”
