SOUTH HADLEY — The South Hadley Board of Health has voted 4-1 to approve a townwide mask mandate, which will go into effect Thursday.
The mask order will not apply to those seated at a restaurant table or a bar, those who have a qualifying disability or medical condition that keeps them from wearing a mask, performers singing or playing brass and wind instruments, and those participating in “water-based activities.” The order otherwise applies to all non-residential buildings in town that are open to the public.
The mandate will remain in effect until the health board, in consultation with the health director and town administrator, decide the risk of COVID-19 spread is “sufficiently diminished.” The health board will be taking up those discussions at its monthly meetings.
The mandate includes financial penalties for institutions that permit people inside without masks in violation of the mandate. The fines would be $50 for the first violation, $100 for the second, and $200 for all subsequent violations. Health officials or the town administrator may, however, simply issue verbal or written warnings at their discretion in place of penalties.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Michele Lyman, the owner of the South Hadley business Serenity Yoga since 2012, said she was opposed to a mask mandate. Lyman urged the town to continue with its current mask advisory.
“In all honesty, a mask mandate will shut down my business,” Lyman said, noting that the pandemic had already significantly hurt her business. “I truly believe people will not attend classes in a mask and this will have to cause me to close my doors.”
Town Meeting member Deborah Boehner, meanwhile, spoke in favor of a mandate.
“I don’t shop here anymore,” Boehner said, adding that she goes to neighboring communities that do have mask mandates to do her shopping. “I don’t feel safe in South Hadley. I’m concerned that people aren’t willing to make the sacrifice of wearing a mask to protect the community members who have no other way of protecting themselves.”
Those comments set the tone for a similar discussion among those on the five-member Board of Health.
Four members of the health board were in favor of the mask mandate: Tony Judge, Karen Walsh Pio, Christine McKiernan and Jessica Collins.
McKiernan, who is a pediatrician, spoke in favor of a mandate that did not carve out too many exceptions — for workout spaces, for example. She noted that cases are rising sharply across the state.
“Gov. (Charlie) Baker came to Baystate today to ask us to cancel all elective surgeries to make room for COVID patients,” McKiernan said. “I can’t see any way around doing everything that we can as a board to prevent spread of this and we know that masks work, that they’re part of the solution.”
The board’s chairwoman — Johanna Ravenhurst, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst — was the lone member opposed to the mandate. She said that there were too many caveats to consider, such as possible exemptions to the mandate, that there are “many other tools” available to help prevent transmission of the coronavirus and that people know the risks and can make informed decisions about their own health.
“We don’t actually have evidence that I’ve seen that there’s significant transmission happening in these settings, as opposed to other settings” such as private households, she said. “I just am wondering how a blanket mask mandate is going to impact our transmission in a significant way.”
After a discussion of when to implement the mandate, Public Health Director Sharon Hart said the town should be able to alert local businesses and distribute educational information by Thursday. The health board members then agreed to implement the mandate on Thursday.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.