City of Abilene Kansas Live Stream

this is chris osterman mayor welcome to the abilene city commission this is a special meeting for september 23rd 2020. first due to covid 1 9 and social distancing we are encouraging viewing all meetings on the live stream city of abilene's youtube page first order of business is roll call here and just thank you just to advise commissioner witt is by phone next item is pledge of allegiance flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um before we go to public comments and communications i want to remind the commissioners if you're using a facebook page make sure it should be used to encourage or enlighten the public with factual information it becomes a problem if it's not social media is questionable because it can allure to the open meetings act and also social media can become a public record my responsibility as mayor is to have a special responsibility to help the members of the governing body move in the same direction as a team and madam mayor can i respond to that sure i just want to say that with 48 hours notice i felt it was pretty detrimental to get the ordinance out in the public and that is the only information we had at the time so i felt it was very important for the public to be informed on what was going on so i understand that but you alluded that i was the one that called the special meeting and we do that as a team so i got calls the next day chewing me out for bringing that up and it was never corrected on your facebook so it made me the one and i was threatened so um you have to be very careful on that because you stated the mayor is the one that called the special meeting and it made me look like i was the responsible one to approve it and i got calls terrible calls the next day so i understand what you're saying but you have to look at the other side what happened and obviously i never intended for you to deal with that and i apologize that you did um technically the mayor does call special meetings that's why i worded it like that um those people didn't understand that right they thought i did it on my solo and that was not the fact and the other reason we wanted to have 48 hours i quickly as possible we need to deal with this the longer you let it go the more people will get upset and there's some other information you'll learn later what happened and i think it will enlighten you excuse me it will enlighten you maybe this wasn't actually brought to us at the best time so all right and uh we will ask for uh aaron martin city attorney to advise us how to proceed for public comments and communications thank you mayor osterman this is aaron martin city attorney i just have a few preliminary housekeeping items to speak to the first being we are of course operating in an open meeting of the governing body and we are operating in a somewhat modified form of the meeting by which attendance has been limited not restricted but limited and because of that the attorney general has provided guidance for how we must conduct the meeting for those for the benefit of those who are not in the room and may be watching on tv or on the youtube channel so one of the first items that i wanted to mention was we're required anytime someone is speaking to first state your name and your your your role or your title um which we've been doing pretty well but just a friendly reminder on that subject and lastly uh pursuant to the attorney general's kansas open meetings act regulations applicable to this meeting we are required to describe at the beginning of the meeting whether public comment will be allowed and what process will be allowed to identify any individual who wishes to comment if permitted and i wanted to mention that namely because in the notice that went out in advance of this meeting we did take the opportunity to indicate that spacing and seating may be limited depending on turnout and to the extent that there were individuals that were not planning to come in until invited or until told they could i thought it'd be useful to have the governing body briefly discuss or take however much time you need the process for allowing public comment and then once that is agreed upon state that and we can proceed accordingly okay uh is there a limit of how many people can have public comments no there is no requirement applicable to public comment on the spectrum of permitted public comment you could allow no public comment or you could allow as much public comment as as you wish to allow for any period of time and i do not i'm not presently aware of any any rules or procedures previously approved by the city commission addressing that issue but perhaps someone else may be say it would simply be a matter of your preference as this is your meeting commissioner schaefer we used to and i don't know if it was a rule or a policy but three minutes was per speaker and commissioner marshall i it was three minutes but if we allow people in today i think we should make it a little less perhaps just in essence of time i don't i disagree i personally don't have a problem with people coming in one at a time but we would definitely need to limit the speaking time i don't disagree with a shorter time but i just was stating for people that we used to do that right we sure did three minutes what do you think well i'm not for sure what is without seeing a group and who wants to talk it's a little hard to make a judgment on that [Music] i would think 20 at two minutes that's 40 minutes is that you think is that reasonable or we go through the 20 and then there's a few more we include them or what do you want to do commissioner ryan uh mr martin is there a i guess with limiting the number that's that kind of perked my ear up is there an issue with that if we didn't pre-state the number of people we were allowing it would be lawful to limit both the duration of speakers and the quantity of speakers of course the primary legal consideration is that if you do choose to allow public comment that everyone has a fair opportunity and that no actions are taken based on viewpoints or positions expressed and so long as that is administered fairly which of course it will be then those uh restrictions on number of speakers and duration of presentation is is appropriate this is commissioner marshall and i think that there's a way to accommodate the public that wants to be at this meeting we should try to do so could yes commissioner shaffer could the chief ask how many want to speak would that be is that possible good great idea i've just received some information from outside that potentially we have nine on the list right now oh nine we want to speak wow so we also have brian holmes has joined the meeting i wanted to just make you aware that brian holm or dr holmes has joined the meeting as well 15. yeah we can accommodate all them uh but my question the next question is should we limit it two or three minutes this is mayor osterman commissioner marshall i would say two minutes under the circumstances okay i'm in favor of that this is commissioner ryan i have absolutely no problem with that okay okay with that said we will have the first one up and it'll be a two minute limit who's time keeping marcus he just got nominated hello good afternoon this is i need your name and address and title okay and we're limiting it to two minutes so and you'll probably have to speak closer to the mic it's hard to hear yes one moment actually i'm gonna come and turn on your mic for you real quick and after he does that could we ask you to repeat your name yeah she'll just have to send us the list yeah send us a list last name yes are we ready yes go ahead okay under what constitutional authority does a governor a city manager or any elected official have authority to make decisions for my health care for my right to choose does the right to choose only extend to those who want an abortion or is that right for every citizen if i had stage four cancer would you tell me how i have to treat it or would that be left up to me as my right to self-govern you want to find me for not wearing a mask that does not prevent anyone from getting the virus that's you imposing your fears on the rest of society to take away my god-given right to choose on september 16 2020 the cdc stated that of the 161 392 death cases only six percent were actually caused by the virus alone you do the math that's 94 percent of people who died with covid if the mask works why social distance if social distancing works why the mask if all of it works why are people still getting it if you choose to wear a mask and you believe it works then why don't you not worry about me not wearing one the flu the size of the flu is only 0.08 microns cdc is known for decades that the flu is transmitted person to person yet they never mandate a mask do you know that covid is only 0.125 microns the virus is transmitted through droplets and so if you're coughing and you're doing any of this that's why they recommend the six feet because it only goes so far and then it drops these masks that you force us to wear to be able to speak in our public offices the n95 mask this one only has an efficiency rate of of 95 percent a t-shirt has 10 a cloth mask only has 10 to 30 percent well thank you it's the two minutes have passed and we appreciate you coming in thank you thanks for letting me speak freely right did we lose dr holmes we appear to have lost trevor and dr holmes on the meetings i'm not sure good afternoon good afternoon i'm still here um okay can you give us your commissioner your name and address and we are limiting uh this to a two minutes so thank you well i'm brian harris uh here in abilene i've been an abilene president inside abilene for 40 years been in dixon county in my entire life except for going to school that's the only time i've been out of it my experience i've spent almost 30 years as dealing with immunology dealing with the pharmaceutical world and also dealing dealing with immunologists epidemiologist and vaccinologist that we actually deal with so understanding this disease and how we can work through it is is been very lacking for one thing is that if you believe that this here i won't take it off but this here is going to stop the disease it will not if you've been told that you've been lied to there's no possible way it can stop it the thing and i'll bring an example up to this take a look at your your sentences there you see about a sentence you see a period that period you can stuff roughly a million viruses in that location so you're gonna tell me that the fiber in here is gonna stop a virus it won't so that's something you've got to keep in mind as well the thing about it is that the only way we're going to actually get rid of this this disease we're not it's here it is a real real disease but it's a disease that we can manage and work through and the only way we're going to actually put it and contain it it's not through this it's not through the social justine it's not through sanitizing which are good practices don't get me wrong but the only way is for enough individuals that have antibodies in them to neutralize the disease these neutralize of the the actually the cova 19 disease so that is something we have so the challenges are important i know it keeps up the asymptomatic type and challenges asymptotic challenge is the one that i if i'm going to get exposed that's the one i want to get exposed to because that's a non-virulent strain it's very similar to how we make vaccines actually as a modified live vaccine that's how we make a vaccine they grow it down to an a variant stage and that's how they how it's done and that's how you would get from someone's asymptomatic and that's it we've just reached two minutes sir so anyway so whatever you do be smart take away the fear because the fear that we're creating in this whole environment is doing more damage to the mental side of our society kind of anxiety than anything this disease could ever do so make sure you vote no don't spread and be a fear-monger be a responsible citizen of this community so i can ask thank you good afternoon uh if you can state your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes so go ahead please okay i'm don nebelsic from don's tire and supply we have a store on the south end of buckeye 714 south buckeye avenue here in abilene i did write a letter to the commission yesterday emailed in and there's a lot of concerns other than what we have for our place out there and i hope you listen well to this last speaker because he's one excuse me don could we guess you're speaking the microphone better he's one person that has more knowledge to this than anybody i've ever heard even on our national platforms you know we our business works in an uncontrolled environment we don't work in an air-conditioned workplace in our shop you know we have dust we have dirt we have sweat it would be virtually impossible to be masked at all times down there i as a business owner i'm not going to stop somebody to come into our place that prefers not to wear a mask to support our business and and you know we need to use some common sense here it's not a one size fits all thing i realize we do have a problem and you're trying to do the best things to your knowledge to help us get through this but sometimes we do things that just don't make sense and i personally feel this is one of them and if you have any questions for me i'd be willing to take them answer them if i could do you have anyone i have a question do you have any one of your customers that say they won't go there because there's no mass worn you know mayor we have customers from all over the state and out of state and generally speaking city and rural you know is about split you know people that live here and people that don't live here 50 50. so a lot of them we don't see very often but no nobody has made that statement to me just more statements of the people that come in that feel it's not warranted and that it should not be done okay thank you thank you hello can you state your name and address and we're limiting it to two minutes per person chris west 2173 fair road abilene can i leave my can i take my mask down yes no okay you can hear me yes just get closer to the mic okay i'm here to represent the businesses in abilene you know there's not a family in town that supports avalyn more than my family i mean we love it here abilene's always supported us i think the the mandate to have businesses be the police of the mask mandate is a little extreme if someone comes to my store and doesn't want to wear a mask and they tell me no when they walk past me i'm not going to tackle them and throw them down but i'm also not going to pay a fine because they chose not to wear that mask i don't think that's the business owner's responsibility we clean our store every night we wipe our carts down every day all of our employees have masks on they never take those masks off unless they're off the clock and out of the store hopefully i try to monitor that i think we do a good job of cleaning we want to protect the city i mean we don't want people to get sick definitely we don't i just don't think that we should be you know in charge of determining whether or not people wear masks in our grocery store thank you thank you good afternoon please state your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes per person hello my name is megan armstrong i live at 1173 old 40 here in abilene i got wind of this mask mandate coming down about 48 hours ago a little disappointed in the short notice of this particular meeting and the topic that it concerns but i'd like to stick to some of the facts of the situation and that's that the population the united united states is 328.2 million we've had 7.8 percent of them test positive with a 0.03 percent death rate compared to dickinson county we have 19 000 residents with 160 people that have tested positive that's a 0.8 for those of you that aren't so hot with math that's less than one percent in dickinson county compared to the national rate of 7.8 we are well below the national percentages with the current rules and policies we have in place right now i read through the preview of the mandate that was posted and my curiosity is how long will this ordinance be in place will we base it on a certain number of people that are sick at a time will we base it on the percentage of the population that's gotten it when does it come to an end my next question is where do the collected monies go are we going to benefit our citizens and provide mass for those that maybe can't are we going to help our businesses with those monies that wasn't explained if we approve fines for what we think keeps us safe right now and wearing a mask what prevents the city of abilene from finding me for not vaccining later it's a slippery slope of what we think is necessary with what kind of data we have available and we just don't have the facts section four of item g states that athletes are exempt from wearing face masks playing sports that's inconsistent with the idea that wearing face masks and mandating them prevents the spread of covid if this were to pass i would expect that particular item would be removed as it's not consistent with the message you're sending if passed this also opens the city to a huge liability due to lawsuits manhattan is currently under a lawsuit for two and a half million dollars from a local citizen because he was fined and arrested that's two minutes there man all right during a time of stress and uncertainty the city is trying to turn a quick book it's unacceptable and detrimental to our community it is my sincerest hope that you'll vote no to this ordinance today thank you hi uh can you give us your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes okay thank you my name is leanne danner i live at 1313 northwest 4th street napoli i'm a registered nurse by profession last 18 years i've spent in medical oncology hematology um i feel like the imposing of fines for mass mandates is not the answer to our numbers i feel like we need to educate our community our business owners and support them in every way we can so they do not fail the i have that the deep understanding for coven 19 virus people with low immune systems chronic core mobilities and things like that excuse me can you um talk closer to the moment so the people with cormorabilities and low immune systems um they're at higher risk for flu influenza other viruses and things like that so i totally i understand that and i understand the fear that everybody has but imposing fines on a mass mandate is not the answer for the numbers we we have right now so that's pretty much all i wanted to say i just don't think it's appropriate to mandate fines for for mass okay thank you thank you hello can you give us your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes per person okay i'm pearl atchison i live at 708 northwest 10th street here in town um i am a retired lscsw which is a qualified mental health therapist that's i've retired for quite some time excuse me you're going to can you not get a little closer to the mic okay i say i'm a retired lscsw um i live here in abilene and i would respectfully ask you guys to vote no i'm not in support of fining for mass i do think that it's important that we all be mindful of safety and people's health and it's okay to wear mass in businesses and stuff but i do think that this is kind of going over the line finding people for not wearing masks and lineup and stuff i do think that most people in our county are pretty respectful of you know wearing masks and stuff i also think that masks increase people's anxiety there's been increases in mental health issues and some of the covet i'm sure i'm not going to throw numbers at you but i'm just basically not in support i also think that it infringes upon people's rights when we start mandating and i don't know where we draw the line do we mandate vaccinations do we mandate i think that this is also a matter of american rights so i would once again respectfully ask you to say no and to vote no you know i like i said i wear mass i'm compliant with that but i don't really see the need in um you know finding people i think it ties up the police force it ties up the courts you know eventually at some point it's unnecessary and i thank you thank you hi hi there can you state your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes kylie higgins since i am six feet away am i allowed to take this off just when speaking um at this time no just talk closer to the mic okay and then you can kylie kyliehicken3125 hawk road in abilene yes okay so as the fable goes if you place a frog into cold water you can slowly heat it to a boiling point and the frog won't jump out it won't sense its coming demise as the water heats up bit by bit but if you throw a frog into boiling water it will immediately jump out i look around and i sense this looming oppression the slow turning up of the heat and so many are so willing to listen to the propaganda eat it up throw it around and think it's they that are doing the good cherishing our freedoms and wanting to hold the line and take a stand and to protect them is not selfish this virus is real but so is our way of life and chipping away at it bit by bit all in the name of trying to defeat something that cannot be stopped is foolishness this virus is real and i am not anti-mask but mandates and fines and turning neighbor against neighbor and creating more division amongst our community is not the answer for children and young people the common flu is much dead is the common flu is much deadlier and yet we are turning the schools and the lives of our kids just upside down over this i pulled my kids from school not because i'm scared of this virus but because i'm scared of what we're doing to them and we have no clue of what we are actually doing we humans were meant to hug each other we're meant to fellowship freely we're meant to express our emotions and see smiles there is a time that we have to choose we must understand that our freedom should not be infringed upon for any reason if you vote to do this to move to fines you are turning up the water you are boiling our freedoms bit by bit so ask yourselves when will this end what is logically next when a vaccine comes out will you follow your weak logic of mandating for the public good something that isn't scientifically proven or tested fully will you make it a mandate that people can't send their children to school without this rushed vaccine or shop in our local stores is this proposed vote to soothe a conscience make you feel like you're doing something productive the sad truth is that nobody gets out of this alive everybody will die at some point two minutes and one sentence if i could live a hundred years in a sterile environment wearing masks and never getting sick but i'd have to turn in my neighbors like the ss guard if they took off their masks i would trade it in a heartbeat to live 40 years in abilene in america of eight months ago so when in question i just ask you to air in the side of freedom thank you thank you hello can you state your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes a person gotcha yes my name is scott hargrave and my address is 1601 north cuny i want to start by saying that in the beginning this was a very serious issue and i also believe that it was serious because no one knew anything about it everyone was running scared but things have changed i know of many people that have contracted this and heard from others with family members that have with little or no symptoms one thing i'm curious about is is how this all came about and i don't know if you can answer that now or not whose idea it was to mandate this thing but i think it's ridiculous and i can tell you that i the amount of people we have out here does not in any way reflect how many people disagree with this not in any way shape or form and i believe that if this is pushed through you're going to have a lot of lawsuits and i'll be one of them i have rights and you you folks that are wanting to implement this are trying to trample my rights and i'm not going to go for it i think that's about all i have to say okay thank you hello can you name give us your name and address and we're limiting it to two minutes a person yes this is connie bruner i live at 305 north vine and i've been a part of the community for the last five years um i'm a business owner so i'm going to address this in a different situation and in a different way we are as a small businesses we are all struggling i have a business downtown and it just makes me laugh that there are no humans on our sidewalks there are no people in our stores and now we're going to put masks on any poor lost soul that walks down the sidewalk we have no people on our streets what has happened with this pandemic has hit small business so amazingly hard that most of us aren't going to make it to make this more difficult in a small community is beyond disbelief i had thought we were as successful as south dakota we had managed to take this issue and make it work we have one death in our on our county right now one death and he probably died of a heart attack i mean the medical people would know better than me but that's what i've heard this is overkill this is unnecessary and it's unfair to our community i think there's a lot of people that would like to see our city government turned around and it is a responsibility of our commissioners we pick these commissioners we want them in charge we want the city manager following what the commissioners suggest rather that the other way around and that's all i have to say okay thank you hi can you state your name and address and we are limiting it to two minutes a person okay it's on the it's on the sheet outside there it is it is sorry i'm like shaken like a leaf because that's what this does to me i don't care i don't care seeing you guys on it it doesn't bother me not one bit but for me personally this can't happen because i want to pass out i can't i can't do it okay so the damage that we're doing to our kids when i see on facebook a mother writes that my child is petrified to let anybody know that she sat next to somebody that tested positive because she's failing her classes from the time that she did online before when we were shut down and she's scared to death to be quarantined at home because she can't do it she needs to be in school our kids are young they got strong immune systems and they need to get it and we need to get on with it i know everybody's talking about mass gatherings is causing this has caused this i've had more conservatively 1500 people and we have eight cases from one wedding that's a less than point zero zero five percent of a percent so before you all make your votes and start finding people and demanding ask yourselves personally where you've been have you worn a mask at the trump train rally i don't think so did we fly somewhere out of state and drive in somewhere else because you didn't want to follow the 14 day quarantine rule that's that's false information well at least get the right information okay whatever whatever before you can impose fines and do something on the people of abilene make sure that we're not being hypocrites and follow the rules ourself that's all i want to say thank you thank you hello can you give us your name and address please yes my name is connie covington and i live at 953 2400 avenue abilene i moved here about a year ago one of the reasons i left california was because of the regulations i don't understand why you guys would put such regulations on us and take away our freedom we're not stupid we've lived this long without your help why now do you think it's so important for you to make a decision for us that's going to affect our daily lives not only our lives but the lives of the people around us it's not fair it's not right one of the reasons i love california is because they decided all of a sudden now that we're going to have water problems because they didn't handle their money right and so you're only allowed to water your yard so many times a day and if you saw your neighbor watering their yard then you were supposed to call and report that that's the democratic way of california is that what is going to be here when you see somebody without a mask are you supposed to call somebody is that coming next can you make us take a vaccine i mean what is the problem why is it so important that people cannot take care of themselves why is it so important that you screw up the numbers i had two friends go in for a coveted test the line was so long they never made it they turned around and went home three days later they got a letter in the mail saying they tested positive that's happening all over i mean you think we're so stupid we don't know that you think we don't talk we don't we don't hear these things we don't know these things and now you're going to tell us that we need a mask for what i went to the store down here in abilene lady behind the counter had a mask on she asked me if i cared if she removed it i said no she took it off and she had a terrible rash all over her face she said her doctor said it's because of her mask i have another friend who's lung class completely collapsed they couldn't hardly breathe arrest him to the hospital the problem was the mask ma'am we've reached two minutes i've reached two minutes jupiter that was fast okay so here's your mask you know what good is it doing are you asking yourself that do you care if you care about your public if you care about your constituents do not try to mandate a mask leave it to the people and let them decide for themselves thank you thank you hi can you give us your name and address please lorraine miller 226 south factory enterprise i was scared to death come in here and talk but um i um first of all i want to ask what is a pandemic anybody answer that what is a pandemic a pandemic is when people are dying dying i mean you get sick you die i work in the medical field i work for a doctor i work in a hospital we've only had two patients actually one that was in the hospital with coveted overweight smoker diabetic the insurance kicked him out after two days said he wasn't sick enough they've had brought in an extra one of those trailers for people not one patient went in not one our coveted patients are home they're not they're not sick so to me this is ridiculous we shouldn't have to be forced to wear a mask my boss says he tells our patients take them off they're like are you sure everybody is just scared to death and the pandemic is fear not the covet thank you is that i'm sorry i didn't hear that i asked multiple times okay thank you all right and before we continue i should let everyone know that there was 270 emails sent to penny silke and they are here and i have reviewed them and i know that all the other commissioners have been given it through their emails does anyone have any questions on that okay and then um next is from what i understand dr holmes would like to speak is there a limit on his uh input as we do everyone else or what do we do is he an invited guest he requested to be here yes he was asked to be here okay sorry i apologize i did not know that question was directed to me i believe that uh you have complete latitude to allow dr holmes as much time as you wish to allow and also i'm sure the commissioners would like probably to ask him specific questions so all right we'll just go ahead dr holmes yes thank you um i'm just going to kind of follow some of the things that were said this the law uh if you look up kansas statutes ksa 65-119 65-202 65-129b are the ones that we're using under emergency orders to basically public health is trying to mitigate the spread of the disease like coronavirus and they're the ones that give us the authority to act as we have been i know people don't like mass i don't like them either i have to wear them all day in my job and i do that to protect me and my patients um they're not 100 effective and so that's where social distancing comes in to try to keep that six feet distance because we think that's where or how far most of time these these uh viruses that are in the droplets in our breath will travel but people talk about the mass can't filter it out that's you know it's in it's not aerosol it's not in the air when it comes out of us so much as it is in droplets and so that's where the mask will capture it this is definitely not influenza i can't believe anybody's even trying to compare it to that because it just it isn't people when you when you speak you cough you sneeze anything a sigh even can release virus into the air you know people talk about herd immunity the other other ladies said that we've only had like 7.8 people in our united states get the virus uh you know her immunities they talk about 70 have to get it that's a whole lot of people and if 7.8 have only had so far and we've already got over 200 000 deaths in the united states how many more deaths are we willing to let happen um they talked about you need to get immune and just get it over with to have the antibodies the problem is with this coronavirus we don't know how long the antibodies last and how effective they are they think maybe they might last three months but we don't know for sure uh people talk about getting an asymptomatic strain that's or from somebody's asymptomatic spreader and that's the one you want you don't know that there's no data that proves that that's just hearsay and and we're gonna have to wait and give us more time to experience this to really know that someone talked about anxiety killing people i've never seen anxiety listed on a death certificate as a cause of death uh people asked how long this order should be in place i think certainly uh it would be time limited but based on how long the pandemic lasts and so it could be longer than six months we don't know uh mr west encountered or indicated he didn't feel like his responsibility of his business to stop people if they're not going to wear a mask but what do they do when somebody walks in that's smoking or somebody doesn't have their shirts or shoes on do they stop them and make them put those on um ordinances work for masking if you look at the data in wichita and saliva you can see they have a decreasing trend overall in cases somebody mentioned that this is about making money with fines that's far from the truth the smoking ordinance that we had in place 16 years ago i believe had fines similar to this and i don't believe there's been one levied since i don't see where requiring mask stops anybody from coming in your door for business or stops you from doing your business it keeps your doors open if anything else because it helps keep lower transmission rates of the virus so that your employees are well enough to stay at work the other problem is if you get one employee sick and they're saying and they can be another employees can be identified with you know 10 minutes six feet distance then those people have to quarantine and that's not a that's not a suggestion that's a mandate by the state people talk about freedom and oppression this is not about that this is about public health and public health only this is not a political issue it's not a party issue it's not a race issue uh it's about trying to save lives and that's not a fear statement people have died if you look at the trends of deaths consistently in the last five six years you'll see that they follow the same path but then if you look at this year it's higher and the only way we can explain that is cobia 19. they talked about death certificates in the end six percent that's not true six percent only had cover 19. that is an overworked provider who i'm sure was overwhelmed probably in new york city and they just wanted to fill it out and move to the next patient global 19 itself doesn't kill somebody it's coba 19 with respiratory failure kidney failure liver failure heart attacks strokes pulmonary emboli it causes clotting cascades and problems that way it doesn't just uh cause a common cold in everybody and you and nobody knows who's going to get worse now if you have other co-morbidities like diabetes and obesity and stuff like that you are more likely to have a worse disease process but letting it letting this virus just run its course that is not what what our job is is public health we have tried to educate the public about this as best we could i have done radio spots since march every wednesday morning we have the kdhe has their site cdc has their site we have the website for the health department for the county i've made myself available to a ton of people uh that uh have asked questions um i think you know we have given the people of abilene and this in the county at large really the chance to show that they can do the right thing and that's to to protect each other and and help each other stop this disease process and help each other to help the economy keep going by keeping people healthy and not sick but we have seen a mass failure of that across the board you're seeing businesses close now because they're not wearing masks at work they get one person they need to get sick and then the next one and then the next one and then the others need to quarantine and so it just it just blossoms um people talked about there's not been any deaths in in dickinson county i've heard that over and over again there have been two deaths related to covet one was from shawnee county so they counted in their county not ours so ours was listed as one and uh this this case was code related now people can have diabetes hypertension heart disease whatever obesity but it doesn't mean they're going to die this year when you add covet to it it prematurely causes deaths across the united states and we've now seen that over 200 000 times in the us and our numbers are rising here in kansas as well uh one lady said that a collapsed lung was caused by a mask that's preposterous there's there's no way that would happen today we've tested 44 the hospital has limited supplies of uh and manpower and time to test everybody we want to that's why the county has come together and we have procured a thousand tests to do a mass test of for covet this saturday from 10 to two at the uh armory in abilene and the county's gonna run it and we're going to do the these are the pcr tests from the state so that's the best best test we can possibly get and they go back to the state to get run it's open to dickinson county residents or people that live outside the county but live in dickinson county uh if you have symptoms we want those folks uh or those that have been exposed to a known case that are asymptomatic but we're not asking people to come by that just want to test for the heck of it we want to make sure that we are using those resources judiciously as far as any other questions or concerns you know i would just ask the city commissioners i know you're in a difficult spot uh this is a heated thing and it really shouldn't shouldn't be i think we should all be on the same page with this to try to mitigate disease and not let people get sick i don't want this to get to the point where we're having more deaths that's certainly not our goal or even hospitalizations for that matter granted some people don't get as sick as others but that's a genetic thing that is a uh somewhat of a race thing because we do know that african-american and the latinos tend to have worse outcomes but we don't know who's going to get sick and how sick and just because the kids aren't getting sick doesn't mean they're not going to spread it to their parents to their in-laws to their grandparents to their co-workers and it just keeps going we know that there's about a four to six week delay in seeing deaths related to a covet outbreak so we're not we're not even going to know how bad it is for quite a while still um i think you have to kind of ask yourself and where do you want to stand on this issue for a public health aspect where will it weigh on your conscience you know a year from now two years from now how are we going to look back and see how we how we voted you know we have a county mandate that that our commissioners are wise enough to pass it's the same when the governor issued only nine counties were brave enough to do that in kansas and i was proud to say that we were one however the attorney general and how senate bill 2016 cut its needs out from there and basically said it's not enforceable i was asked by the county attorney to see what i could do because she doesn't have the manpower or time and resources to litigate this which would have to be a civil penalty if you took somebody to court or to task for not wearing mass at their place so i'm asking for the city's help to try to give us at least some teeth with with the fines you know i look at salinas i think they're 25 50 and 100 for the first second and third i can't remember what ours is proposing but um you know it's people are not going to turn each other in and you you don't have the police going around looking for people not wearing masks they will educate uh just like they do if they you know with seat belt logs or with uh other folks that you know there's lots of warnings that happen and so i would see the same thing happen with masking you know it's not like they're going to go up to a certain business see that they're not wearing masks and start issuing citations there's going to be an education process a talk you know have a discussion and say would you please comply and it would only be an instance of continued non-compliance that i would see uh it'd be necessary to issue a fine you know the only the only other thing that we have to try to mitigate this that i that i can do as a health officer would be to close a business for non-compliance until they can comply and that is not what i want to do i don't want to i want our economy to be as strong as possible i want our kids at school i want our life to be as normal as possible but people have to realize we're still in a global pandemic a pandemic doesn't necessarily mean everybody's dying it means that a disease is here and it's uncontrolled spread across the globe and it's easily spread so you know i i hear the anger in people's voice i hear the anxiety in their voice i hear you know people talking about my right my right my right but i'm trying to protect those who can't speak for themselves the people in the nursing homes the people that are too scared to come up and talk in front of you guys because they're afraid of a backlash i can't tell you how many messages i've had today personally in favor of this because they know what's the right thing to do and just because they're not brave enough to come in front of the city commission or send an email doesn't mean that their voice doesn't matter i'll be happy to answer any questions dr holmes commissioner schaefer we at our monday meeting we talked about an end date or in time or some way to to terminate this this ordinance and i'd heard you know in the news reports about transmissibility rates and then in today's paper i think they use the term positivity rate so i'm wondering is is there some measure that's recommended that we could put in the ordinance and then at that point we could suspend the ordinance thank you for that question i have not seen that discussed anywhere else but my own personal thought it would be to have verbiage in there that basically discusses that you know this will be in effect until it has been determined that this pandemic has subsided by the kansas department of health and environment and a mask ordinance is no longer necessary and then another another question this is really a question uh what's the difference between what was happening february through august and now we have community spread i think it's because it was coastal mainly if you think about where the chinese folks that have this initial virus that spread globally i don't think a lot of them come to kansas especially when you look at the cultural diversity of our place compared to the coast you know they're they're going to to where their relatives are we've known for months that this has been somewhat of a slow creep to the rural areas but now it's here and it's past time really to to act and maybe one more um i was in i was in lensborn today and went to the grocery store to get some lunch and they had a sign on the door that said you can't come in here without a mask city ordinance at lensburg and i went in with my mask on and i didn't see anybody in there without a mask yeah it's uh there are plenty of other states there's been lots of stories from people that have gone on vacation to colorado and come back and say wow it was everybody's wearing a mask out there it's no big deal everybody's you know buying into it and and compliant and and it's wonderful it reminds me of the same stories we heard before the tobacco ordinance and when we ended up getting the passage of that you know people would go to other communities and be like it's so refreshing to be able to go to a restaurant and not have to breathe in secondhand smoke and it's just a very similar similar issue i don't know we're all red-blooded americans we all want to be john wayne no one wants to tell anybody what else to do no one wants to be told what to do i get that i have that in me as well and and you know i'm not i'm not here before you for any kind of personal agenda other than public health and trying to save lives and decrease not just mortality or death but morbidity of disease related to this virus because we don't know what the long-term effects are going to be of it right now you know even the kansas state high school association has requirements for that all the students that are positive they have to have a return to play where they before they can go back to normal sports they have to be cleared by a provider they just can't jump right back into it because there's a high rate of myocarditis that they're seeing and myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart wall muscle what that does is it weakens the heart and it leads to a stretching of the wall where the heart enlarges and becomes what we call cardio having cardiomyopathy and what that does is that stretches the electrical fibers of our heart that normally are in a certain zone so to speak and then you end up getting irregular heart rhythms that can lead to sudden cardiac death so we don't again we don't know the long-term effects of this right now but we're trying to do the best we can there's a doctor's tights with ku his his favorite saying is we are building the plane as we fly it and unfortunately that's where we're at but we're you know public health we're trying to do the best job we can to protect people and despite what they think again i don't have a some sort of odd agenda to try to control people thank you thank you do we have any more questions for dr holmes dr holmes this is commissioner ryan yeah um i know and i know we kind of discussed this uh last night over the phone and once again i appreciate you uh reaching out to me as i as i expressed that last night um i i asked the question of what after the county commission approved the initial or i guess approved the enforcement of the governor's executive order what they did after that and i know that natural deflection is to say that due to the attorney general's statement it appeared that it was unenforceable as well as that it was difficult to enforce i believe you were discussing that with uh our county attorney um i guess and and some of the commentary that was getting sent to the commission some folks didn't realize that the county's mandate included abilene some folks didn't even know the county had passed a mandate so i i guess it begs the question did they did they slap the horse and let it run without actually trying to catch it and actually trying to communicate what they were doing and informing the public and i think that could have been very helpful and i think that would have really helped increase people actually following the mandate if there was a little bit of uh education uh to the public from the county commission itself it it it i i don't wanna you know assume this but it um from our stance here at least from mine i won't speak for anyone else but from my stance it almost feels like the city commission is now being used as a scapegoat because the county commission wasn't broadcasting what their intentions were after they passed that mandate because naturally they they got a lot of heat i just think a lot of these issues could have been curtailed with some public education and communication from them well you'd have to ask them that i mean we posted it online i believe the paper had it in the newspaper printed it's available on the county website for both the health department and the court the county website i've been on like i said the radio 8 30 in the morning every wednesday since march and i i'm not i'm not sure what else to do other than maybe a mass mailing or something uh but that costs quite a bit of money uh that unless we had like a list serve for people but you know people people need to get out and kind of educate themselves a little bit about this as far as what our ordinances are and i know it's not easy to know when something's always changed but i don't feel like the city is a scapegoat by any means and take a little bit of offense to that actually but um you know not knowing that abilene is in the county i i can't explain that necessarily you know i flew to alaska during this and caught a lot of flack for that i'll take that heat that's fine but i did it as safely as possible i wore my mask the whole time i socially distanced and did not have to quarantine because i did not go to a place that required that or come back through a place that required that and i'm an essential healthcare worker and i can go to work and do my job even if i am in quality and i just don't think people understand that and that's fine but i guess that's why i'm saying that now but i thought it was a little bit laughable when people thought i left the country to go to alaska maybe that's silly this is chris osterman and i my question is i know the county has the ordinance but from what i'm reading our city ordinance can't even be issued unless there is a penalty included in that and did the county and i know dr holmes you probably can't answer to that but did the county have penalties when they issued theirs because for ours uh what i read is that there had to be penalties included in an ordinance so did the county just not include that or i don't basically i'm sorry if i can go ahead no no that's fine that's fine thank you go ahead um they basically passed the ordinance that the governor put out so if there needed to be any other fines or anything in it i would think that the governor would have had her legal team resolve that issue prior to it being printed okay this is commissioner marshall i'm not sure if this is for you dr holmes or for our city manager i was under the assumption and it's been stated that we've been following the state and the county the city has so i don't understand this aren't we following everything since the beginning we have this is jane fultz city manager yes uh when the executive order came out and dixon county adopted that executive order we stated early on that we as a city of aveline were following that mandate yes thank you all right does anyone else have any questions for dr holmes at this time dr holmes just one final thing is commissioner schaefer is this a true statement i wear my mask to protect you you wear your mask to protect that your me also protects yourself that's why it's called personal protective equipment well i i make that statement i heard there was a former medical professional in town that said that the mask doesn't offer protection for for me anybody that says masks don't work or that masks don't help protect each other simply doesn't know the data thank you thank you if there's no further questions thank you dr holmes thank you for your time and consideration okay um and so that closes the public comments and communications and next item is consider the ordinance 20-339-0 an ordinance requiring the wearing a mask or other face coverings in public spaces within the city of abilene kansas do i have any discussion do you want a motion i said discussion i'm sorry what do you want a motion without and then we'll discuss after the motion that's usually how that goes all right uh madam mayor commissioner shaffer i move we approve an ordinance requiring the wearing of masks or other face covering in public spaces within the city of abilene kansas ordinance number 20-3390 okay do i have a second i'm repeating do i have a second for the motion to approve the ordinance 20-3390 motion fails mayor ostomy may i say something yes i think part of the problem with this whole ordinance has been as brandon alluded to it was brought on so fast we weren't even told we were going to consider an ordinance we just got here and the resolution was written up i think back to the education if the public had an owner was coming maybe reactions would be better i read this policy very very thoroughly i set up till 11 12 o'clock the other night going through it i as a city commissioner i think it's over reaching my authority okay do i have any other comments this is commissioner ryan um i i also want to say that uh i believe this ordinance if it was passed i think it would have been a gross overreach of this governing body i really do there's a there's a fine line and i think for for my uh my view on that line i think this was just a little bit over it i had a lot of issue with the fines being imposed i mean then learning today that this ordinance actually could not even be a legal ordinance in the city of abilene without a fine i just heard that in the meeting and that really uh that really cemented it for me um i was uh i was looking at stuff online last night and a quote i came across and uh it was kind of fitting and i wasn't looking for anything or anything it just came across the screen it said nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program that was from milton friedman and i think i think that's absolutely uh applicable to to this ordinance that we just uh we just looked at so thank you um this is chris ostern mayor i was really surprised we had this ordinance in front of us and already ridding up and from my knowledge it's that the city commissioners are to be brought the information to us so that way we can consider what if there was an ordinance to be written and how it was supposed to be written that was my major concern that it was already done that's not the way the process should be working it should be we should be getting the information and seeing if we need to move on with an ordinance and that didn't happen so that shortens our process and it makes it uncomfortable at least for myself so with that said um city manager reports jane foltz city manager thank you i have nothing oh trevor's on commissioner can you guys hear me all right yes yes all right um in person but still present to this meeting uh wanting to reload my thoughts uh i after doing all these comments and the first thing i actually want to say is i was very impressed by the community response and how many people had actually very well articulated their opinion and it wasn't just general ranting but really and i just want to say i i just as a thank you out to our community for participating in this process um that's very encouraging to meet us work through that and with that i think in this issue it needs to be something of social accountability and not legal accountability i think that's the best way to approach it in a situation where people do have such strong opinions one way or another into it and then with all this too i want to thank our professionals uh approaching this situation of uncertainty we're making decisions with uncertainty in front of us and there's certain risks associated with those decisions of one way or another and so i think with our current status and where people see information whereas the information uh this decision today is this word important risk that's in front of us and that as this situation continues to play out we will continue to assess it and look at those risks that are in front of us so with that okay thank you commissioner whip since there is no other items um adjournment so moved i will second that motion it's been moved in second to adjourn the special meeting for september 23rd 2020 roll call vote commissioner witt commissioner schaefer yes commissioner marshall yes commissioner ryan yes mayor osterman yes thank you

Channel: City of Abilene Kansas

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Length: 78min 29sec (4709 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020