Muscatine City Council Votes to Prevent City from Enforcing Mayor's Mandatory Face Mask Proclamation

You might remember that Mayor Diana Broderson of issued a controversial proclamation mandating that everyone wears face coverings within the city of Muscatine, Iowa. Lots of people were happy that she did it, but most people agree that she lacks the ability to actually issue this type of proclamation. Including, it seems, the Muscatine City Council. If this City Council meeting discussion is to be believed, most of them were completely unaware that she was going to release her proclamation until word of it got leaked to the media last week.

I was on YouTube yesterday and noticed that the City of Muscatine had posted their city council meeting for 07/09/20. Curious about what they would say about the mask mandate (and knowing that it would likely be discussed), I decided to run the video and passively listen while I did other things.

Both Council members Dennis Froelich and Peggy Gordon read prepared speeches about their opposition to Mayor Broderson's proclamation order. It's not that either of them are against face coverings, but they disagreed with the mandate and with the process that the mayor unilateral decision to issue the order.  Mayor Broderson discussed her reasoning for making the order, but told everyone that she wasn't prepared to rescind it any time soon. Council member Kelcey Brackett was supportive of the proclamation, even if he'd have preferred to get more input.

And then there was a comical part where Council member John Jindrich repeatedly asked if they could hear him. He disagreed with the proclamation. He disagreed with it so much that he offered up the following motion:

I would like to ask the City Council to approve a motion directing the interim City Administrator and incoming City Administrator to not allow or approve any funds or staff time to be spent or utilized following or enforcing the face mask proclamation as issued by the Mayor of Muscatine from the city of Muscatine on July 5th or any future date unless the proclamation is consistent with the recommendation of the Governor of Iowa.

The motion passed with a 5-2 vote.

After the vote, Council member Brackett pointed out the Muscatine City Council could no longer have no meetings or discussions from that time forward regarding the face mask proclamation because it would tie up staff time. Which means that they can no longer officially discuss the mandatory face mask proclamation. Mayor Broderson agreed. To which Council member Brackett said, "So we can do absolutely nothing on it now at this point in time in regards to that proclamation. We can't adjust it or make changes or anything along those lines from the way that it was done."

So it appears that Mayor Broderson's Face Covering Mandate is effectively and officially neutered.