ATHABASCA - Athabasca County councillors will consider implementing a mandatory mask bylaw at a special meeting next Tuesday, Nov. 17, before a regularly-scheduled public works committee meeting.
No such bylaw, or even a discussion, was on the agenda for the Athabasca County council meeting Nov. 10, but an addition by Coun. Dennis Willcott brought the issue front and centre, and by the end of the discussion, the special meeting had been proposed to consider a potential first reading.
“I want to talk about this because I know in Westlock, there are quite a few down there that are infected. I talked to by brother-in-law in Morinville and they shut the school down because there are a lot of cases there,” said Willcott. “What’s getting me madder than anything is we’re not getting information about how many people have it in the county … We should know that.”
Currently, the number of active cases within the borders of Athabasca County is at just two, but with neighbouring counties — Westlock (13 active cases), Smoky Lake (60 active cases) and M.D. of Opportunity (18 active cases) — on the province’s watch list, Willcott said he felt it was just a matter of time before more cases are reported within the county.
“Why wait until the horse is out of the barn?” he asked.
Council passed the motion by consensus to set the special meeting for Nov. 17 at 9 a.m.
“The reality is that it’s everywhere,” said Coun. Doris Splane.
The details of the coming legislation are unclear at the moment, but councillors also passed another motion to try to schedule a meeting with representatives from the Town of Athabasca and Village of Boyle beforehand, in the hopes of proceeding as a unified region.
The Town of Westlock has already implemented a mandatory face-covering bylaw, and the Town of Barrhead now has its own bylaw on the books that can implemented, if and when council decides to do so.
Athabasca town council will be presented with its own similar bylaw for first reading at its Nov. 17 meeting.
