Last-minute ordinance fails
CHENEY – In a split 4-3 vote Tuesday night, Oct. 26, the City Council rejected a last-minute ordinance that would require employees and volunteers – but not elected officials – to get a coronavirus vaccine or lose their jobs.
Council members Vincent Barthels, Ryan Gaard, Dan Hilton and Jill Weiszmann objected to requiring a related inoculation, an effort supported by Councilman Paul Schmidt and backed by council members John Taves and Teresa Overhauser.
During the meeting, Schmidt, Taves and Overhauser favored requiring employees to be “fully vaccinated” without any option for testing.
“If we’re going to ignore it (vaccine requirement), we’ll live with that peril,” Schmidt said.
Initially, the council agenda called for continued discussion of a vaccine mandate, a discussion that began two months ago. But during the session, City Administrator Mark Schuller presented ordinance E-959 — similar to one previously discussed but without any testing options.
Taves and Schmidt seized the opportunity to move and second it for approval.
That effort set off a lengthy debate over whether the city should become only the fourth municipality in the state to mandate employee vaccinations.
Schuller nudged the council to pass the ordinance, providing one-sided information on why a vaccination requirement was good for the city.
But Councilwoman Weiszmann would have none of it.
“All I hear is everybody needs to do it,” she said. “Where’s the other side?”
“I don’t have that information right here,” Schuller responded, acknowledging – but downplaying – the fact the experimental vaccines will have side effects.
Weiszmann said she had done her research on the vaccines, the costs and even testing.
When Schuller rejected the idea that testing may be an option because of its expense, she pointed to local grocery stores that carry two-pack testing kits for $26. She also pointed to local schools, noting they get their tests for free from the state.
Rather than find a reason to require vaccination, Weiszmann suggested the city follow the Cheney School District model to “keep their employees.”
Weiszmann noted that thousands of public and school employees have been accommodated across the greater Spokane region by government agencies that didn’t want to lose qualified and experienced staff.
Schuller noted the city could lose more than 30 employees. He even provided a data sheet showing only 36% of police have gotten inoculated.
“I’m truly concerned about losing these folks,” Barthels said. “If we start losing police officers, we’re not going to be able to recruit.”
He questioned whether the “juice is worth the squeeze” when it comes to a vaccine mandate.
“We’re thinking about forcing a mandate that will roll us into fall and winter with arguably less employees,” he said.
Barthels said he’s vaccinated and pro-vaccine, but he’s anti-mandate.
Gaard and Hilton echoed those comments.
Both said they support vaccination, but won’t mandate it of others.
“You’re playing Russian roulette if you don’t get vaccinated,” Hilton said. “But my gut tells me I shouldn’t mandate this.“
Rather than approve an ordinance, he called for educating the public.
Hilton said if the pandemic worsens, he may change his mind.
Under Roberts Rules of Order, having voted on the winning side of the debate, he could call for the ordinance to be resurrected in the future.
In the meantime, he said the city should encourage employees to talk the issue over with their doctors.
The debate came after several residents spoke in opposition to any city mandate.
No mandate support
Resident Nicole Aguilera called out the council for considering a policy that required city employees and volunteers to be subjected to a vaccine while exempting themselves, referring to the proposal as “rules for we, but not for thee.”
“You are coercing employees,” she said, calling forced vaccination the “greatest human rights violation.”
Aguilera told the council it is illegal and unconstitutional to deny employment based on a worker’s decision not to submit to an experimental shot.
She also noted that the council and city management staff are not qualified to decide who should receive any exemption requested on the grounds of religion or health.
“Who are you to decide someone’s beliefs and if they are sincere,” she said.
Resident Rachel Buck urged the council to “pause and reflect” before forcing employees to get a shot, noting forcing employees to get an experimental vaccine that does not prevent catching the virus is essentially discarding trained professionals.
She noted that the state Department of Transportation lost 462 employees, the state Department of Corrections 429 and the Washington State Patrol and the Department of Social and Human Services each more than 100 employees due to a gubernatorial mandate on stat employees.
“Forcing our employees to do this is wrong,” resident Steve Grime added.
Grime asked what the city will do when the Centers for Disease Protection and Control moves to redefine “fully vaccinated.”
Federal health officials have discussed changing the definition since vaccines currently available do not stop someone who has been inoculated from catching or spreading the virus, and manufacturers are now recommending “boosters.”.
Jessica Enright, whose husband Scott Enright works for the city, told the council to leave it to employees to decide.
She read a letter from her husband questioning if the city wants “employees to be men and women of character or mindless automatons.”
Employee Bill Lathrop, too, chastised council members for entertaining a forced vaccine requirement.
“ I feel as If I’m being threatened, coerced and bullied,” he said. “Fear and intimidation is absolutely no way to lead.”
City Light employee said the council’s wading into the mandate debate was only causing animosity between employees and residents.
Fear-mongering, coercion
Later in the meeting, Councilwoman Weiszmann agreed.
“It’s fear-mongering; it’s coercion,” she said. “And I’m really, really fed up with it.
Weiszmann said she was upset Schmidt would try to bring up an ordinance in the middle of a meeting without the council and community having an opportunity to first read it.
Mayor Chris Grover came to Schmidt’s aid, saying, “We can email this to you right now.”
Schuller, too, came to Schmidt’s defense, telling Weiszmann it was the same policy she’s already seen, but “without the testing option.”
Weiszmann said the city shouldn’t be in the business of mandating experimental vaccines.
“Us, as a council, shouldn’t be telling another human being to put an experimental drug in their bodies,” she said. “We’re not doctors .”
Regardless, Schmidt said “the numbers are not good” in relation to the virus.
“It’s going to come down to those who aren’t vaccinated sooner or later are going to get sick or vaccinated,” he said.
Roger Harnack is the owner/publisher of Free Press Publishing. Having grown up Benton City, Roger is an award-winning journalist, columnist, photographer, editor and publisher. He's one of only two editorial/commentary writers from Washington state to ever receive the international Golden Quill. Roger is dedicated to the preservation of local media, and the voice it retains for Eastern Washington.
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