by SARAH THOMACK
St. Joseph Post
There was a lengthy discussion during the St. Joseph City Council work session Thursday, with residents weighing in over a possible citywide mask mandate.
The current mask mandate is set to expire on September 11th.
Councilmember Marty Novak, during the Zoom meeting, said if people choose to wear masks and if businesses want to require masks, they can.
“I think that if somebody wants to step forward and take those precautions, they certainly can, and a lot of people are,” Novak says. “I feel we’ve got an existing order which runs through September 11th and conventionally, I’m for keeping the order that we have and seeing how to move forward at that time.”
Five councilmembers wanted to continue with the current mask mandate and four wanted to make a change. Due to there not being a consensus, Mayor Bill McMurray said they'll pick up the discussion again closer to the date of the mandate expiring.
The current ordinance requires masks in retail stores of 10,000 square feet or more.
Missouri Western State University Interim President Elizabeth Kennedy joined the Zoom call work session.
Kennedy says since they've been monitoring data, there are currently 22 positive COVID-19 cases related to students, one is isolating on campus and the rest are isolating off campus. There are reportedly 53 individuals quarantining because they may have had contact with a positive case.
“What we’re doing as a university is we’re working to establish a dashboard that we will have on our public website so that folks can go in and see how many cases we’ve had, who’s in quarantine, who’s in isolation and what are numbers are looking (like),” Kennedy says. “Right now, when we talk about positive cases and all of students and all of our employees, we are just a little over a half of a percent positivity rate.”
Classes at Missouri Western started on Monday, August 17th, two weeks earlier than the originally scheduled date of August 31st.