City struggling with mandate question

City council members and officials expressed views at their last meeting on a proposal to require Coulee Dam’s employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

After the council’s third discussion on the subject in a month Nov. 10, not much clarity seemed to emerge.

The city’s legal research on the subject shows it can require employees to follow such a rule, but the city must offer “feasible and reasonable” accommodations for qualified medical or religious reasons, Clerk Stefani Bowden said.

“To me, the hardest part of this is what is reasonable?” Mayor Bob Poch said, adding that a lot of questions still need to be answered.

Poch said he has been vaccinated and highly recommends it, but added, “I don’t know which way to go with this.”

Councilmember Keith St. Jeor questioned whether requiring testing for Covid weekly in employees who don’t want to be vaccinated, requiring them to wear a mask always and possibly providing a separate lunchroom can be considered “feasible.”

He advocated looking at it from the point of view of a vaccinated employee, realizing the unvaccinated one still poses more risk since vaccines are not 100% effective against contracting the virus.

Councilmember Larry Hall, retired from the city’s police department, said police don’t have the luxury of keeping their distance from a lot of people they need to deal with, including many elderly, inside their homes. If police aren’t vaccinated, he said, it makes it hard to “protect and serve.”

Councilmember Merv Schmidt, noting that he, too is vaccinated and recommends it, still stands by his earlier position against forcing anyone to get the vaccine.

“I just don’t think we should do that,” Schmidt said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to get these people to believe in the vaccination. … They need to go get some good medical information and make the decision off of that.”

The council did not act on a draft resolution to require employees to get the jab.

The council will meet again on Monday, Nov. 29, at 6 p.m. via teleconference and online.