City board OKs mask ordinance
The Hot Springs Board of Directors unanimously approved an ordinance Tuesday night that mirrors a “sample ordinance” the governor released last week regarding the wearing of facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
City Attorney Brian Albright told the board the ordinance “does not require anyone to wear a mask.” Albright noted that the directives from the state of Arkansas “are what do that, not the city of Hot Springs.”
“This does not expand what the state has already directed, and it does not impose its own penalty,” Albright said.
Albright noted the city of Fayetteville had passed an ordinance requiring all inhabitants and visitors inside the city to wear a mask everywhere. “That is overreaching,” Albright said, noting that their own city attorney had advised them it was overreaching.
Albright said the ordinance was the culmination of discussions between the Department of Health, the governor’s office and the Arkansas Municipal League. Passage of the ordinance means the board is essentially saying that within the confines of the city of Hot Springs, “people will abide by the rules” that have been promulgated by the Arkansas Department of Health pursuant to the governor’s emergency
declaration. That declaration includes guidelines and mandates regarding the wearing of masks at certain business, including restaurants, salons and gymnasiums. The ordinance, which was added to Tuesday’s agenda, supplanted a resolution the board placed on the agenda last week.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, in response to the number of COVID-19 cases continuing to rise across Arkansas and “in an effort to curb the spread of the disease,” issued an executive order on Friday that “clarifies local governments’ responses to the health crisis,” the city said in an email on Monday regarding the updated agenda for Tuesday’s board meeting.
“The executive order contains a sample ordinance, written in conjunction with the Arkansas Municipal League, that could affect a proposed resolution on the agenda for this board meeting regarding the use of face masks.”
Hot Springs’ ordinance references guidance released by the Arkansas Department of Health on June 19, “which noted overwhelming scientific evidence that the wearing of face masks helps prevent the transmission of COVID-19. This ordinance also establishes a manner in which local governments can ensure masks are worn. Rather than focus on the criminalization of refusing to wear a mask, the ordinance promotes the use of education and encouragement as the most effective means to ensure the use of face masks. It also allows for the use of law enforcement to support local businesses that encounter individuals who refuse to wear a mask,” the email said.
Section 2 of the proposed ordinance states that “local law enforcement and other city officials will act in a support capacity to local businesses that wish to enforce the use of masks upon their premises. Law enforcement, acting in such a support capacity, shall educate and encourage members of the public who decline to wear facial coverings regarding the efficacy of wearing such coverings according to the
ADH guidance on facial coverings released on June 19, 2020. Law enforcement may additionally act in a support capacity to local businesses by educating individuals who decline to comply with the facial covering requirement of any local business that the individual must abide by that requirement or leave the premises.”
The ordinance directs the city clerk to “print and mail this ordinance to all businesses within the municipal limits as soon as practical, for display in a prominent area of the business or on the primary entrance way.”