City Employee Vaccine Mandate Debate Continues

CHENEY – Cheney’s city council is once again debating the efficacy of vaccine mandates amongst themselves and concerned citizens. The Dec. 28 city council meeting started with some routine business before things heated up when Resolution E-959 was brought to the table. Resolution E-959 is the vaccine mandate policy for city employees.

The original plan for the Dec. 28 meeting was to vote on Resolution E-959 but emergency action was taken and the vote was moved to its own special meeting on Jan. 10 where the council will decide once and for all the fate of Resolution E-959. This emergency action passed with four yes votes against three no votes.

The council decided moving the vote was important to gather as much information as possible and to hold out hope that the supreme court’s Jan. 7 decision on the vaccine mandates will bring some clarity to their situation. The council’s legal representative Helle Aaes-Jorgensen agreed with other council members when he said he didn’t believe the Jan. 7 hearing would bring any more clarity on the situation because the supreme court would only be hearing oral arguments and not making a final decision.

Resolution E-959 has to be voted on so the city is in compliance with the United State government’s federal vaccine mandate policy that will be regulated by The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA.)

The OSHA’s testing ETS will require all businesses with 100 employees or more to provide proof of their employer’s vaccinations status or submit to weekly negative COVID-19 tests if they don’t want to get vaccinated or don’t meet the medical or religious vaccination exemption status. The ETS stipulates that vaccination and testing records must be thoroughly kept proving every employee’s status or the business, in this case, the city, could be subject to hefty fines for every violation. The records must be kept in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The city could be fined up to $13,563 per single violation and willful violations could amount to fines up to $136,532. The minimum penalty for willful violations is $9,753.

While the council debated Resolution E-959 there were over 40 citizens attending the zoom meeting. Several citizens voiced their concern and displeasure over the council’s actions regarding employee vaccine mandates.

Rachel Buck started speaking to the council live with a group of people protesting the vaccine mandates. Buck believes the employee vaccine mandate concern is a drastic overreach in bodily anatomy and in no way consents to such a resolution. During her testimony, you could hear horns honking in support of the protest.

Other citizens joined her concerns like Nicole Aguilera who called this resolution “mandate nonsense,” and Heather W. said over the Zoom meeting that she is appalled at the city council’s decision to move on something that the community has already voiced extreme displeasure towards.

Other citizens talked about the perceived liberties and freedoms that are stripped away when vaccine mandates are enacted. Scott W. wanted to try and “plant a seed” as he put it. He talked about the contradictions of COVID policies and warns of COVID policies leading to digital social credit systems and it “boils down to one thing, our freedom,” he said during his closing remarks.

Stacy Ashcroft believes all health care decision should be left to individuals and points to the Nuremberg Code to protect individuals from being subjected to experimental vaccines or any experimental medical treatments. Ruthie Hanford ended the community portion of the meeting by stating that she’s against forced mandates that she stands with the rights of city workers and local first responders who reject vaccine mandates.

After the public portion of the meeting, the council continued to hash out the details and consequences of the controversial resolution. Council member Teresa Overhauser wanted to act on the resolution that night and lamented the council’s decision to drag out the vote. “The same council members that wanted to move swiftly (previously) are now dragging it out,” Overhauser said.

Much of the council’s debate centered around the testing, exemption, and record keeping procedures of Resolution E-959. There was a lot of contention over the religious exemption policy because some council members wanted to prove religious beliefs, but other council-members warned them about the dicey nature of making people prove their religious beliefs which interferes with people’s right to religious freedom.

There are also several testing details that need to be ironed out to meet OSHA requirements. At-home tests can be validated as long as they’re FDA approved and read by an OSHA approved third-party. Tests cannot be self-administrated and self-read.

The council will meet again for a special meeting on January 10 to vote on Resolution E-959 and decide if or how the city of Cheney will handle the vaccine mandate for its employees.