Hundreds converge at County Board session to oppose measure, board proceedings scrapped when meeting sites couldn’t be electronically linked

For there not actually being an official meeting, last Tuesday night’s monthly meeting of the Pierce County Board of Supervisors was quite a spectacle.

In fairly routine fashion, the Finance & Personnel Committee forwarded a recommendation to the full county board for passage of a new ordinance that would give more power to its “Local Health Officer” when there is deemed to be an outbreak of communicable diseases.

The County Board was meeting with some department heads at the Law Enforcement Center. The conference room on the lower level of the Courthouse Annex building was where the public was directed to participate in the meeting. During the Finance & Personnel Committee meeting, on hand were one member of the media, one citizen, a Pierce County Sheriff’s Department Deputy, and Deputy County Clerk Cyndi Kern. From the close of that meeting until 7 p.m., arguably the largest assembled public crowd since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic converged on the meeting. At the Finance & Personnel Committee meeting, visitors were told that masks had to be worn. That protocol was abandoned as a crowd filled the hallways and gathered outside, wait-

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SPECIAL PIERCE COUNTY BOARD MEETING: TUESDAY, JULY 14, 6 P.M.

RIVER FALLS HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM

Photos by John McLoone. ing to sign in to speak against the proposed ordinance. There were members of churches. There were political groups. There were sports teams. There were groups that hold public events. One man asked if everyone was there to oppose the ordinance. It was agreed that there was no one there in favor of it. At the Finance & Personnel Committee meeting, there was at least one person from UW-River Falls speaking in favor of it. However, the meeting started before live coverage of it was established in the Annex building, so it was difficult to follow her line of argument. At least one supervisor at Finance & Personnel spoke out against increasing the power of the Director of Public Health.

With a busy agenda and a throng of people in the Annex committee room and temperatures in the room rising – reflected in the moods of the attendees and the mercury in a thermometer, the County Board meeting got underway, with 100 or more people still awaiting their chance to sign the register that they wanted to speak.

The video feed certainly isn’t a great solution for a public meeting. Sound from the Law Enforcement Center was difficult to hear with only four people in the room. When it was packed, it was difficult to hear anything. And on the County Board side, they could hear nothing from the Courthouse Annex. At one point, it was announced that the county computer technician would come and fix the system, so the county board could hear public comment from the crowd. That plan was abandoned, though, and the announcement was made that the meeting was cancelled until a better place to hold such a meeting can be found.

County Board Chairman Jeff Holst said that the proposed Public Health Ordinance will get its own night. A meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14 at the River Falls High School Auditorium, a venue that safely can hold a large crowd and still allow for social distancing.

The Ordinance

Officially it’s Ordinance No. 20-01 which would “Amend Chapter 1, Article IV, Sections 1-29 and 1-31 of, and Create Chapter 120 ‘Communicable Diseases – Authority and Duties of Local Health Officer’ in the Pierce County Code.”

The “Local Health Officer, upon the appearance of any communicable disease in Pierce County, shall immediately investigate all the circumstances and make a full report to the appropriate governing body and Wisconsin Department of Health Services,” the ordinance states. “The Pierce County health officer shall promptly take all measures necessary to prevent, suppress and control communicable diseases,” the ordinance states. Number four in the duties is what seemingly drew the crowd to the meeting: “The Pierce County health officer may do what is reasonable and necessary for the prevention and suppression of disease; may forbid public gathering when deemed necessary to control outbreaks or epidemics and shall advise the Wisconsin Department of Health Services of measures taken.”

The new ordinance gives the Pierce County Health Officer the power to write citations. Violations of the officer’s orders results in a “$500 fine for each violation.”

“A separate offense shall be deemed committed each day during or on which a violation occurs or continues,” the ordinance states.

‘A Common Sense Approach to Public Health’

Chairman Holst said the purpose of the ordinance is to give the county local control, rather than be at the liberty of what the state orders.

“We need to do this because if we do this ordinance and the state has this fiasco, the county believes we can do a better job of monitoring things here. We don’t want to close everything down like the state did,” he said. “If we can track something to one or two establishments, we can deal with that instead of shutting everyone down. We’ll go back in and we’ll educate the business owner. It’s about giving more control in the hands of the county rather than the state.”

Holst said that the Public Health Officer reports to the Board of Health and the County Board, which would make sure there is control over how the ordinance is utilized.

“This whole thing is a worse-case scenario that we hope will never happen. We hope it will never have to be used. Our goal is to use a common sense approach to public health, and the Public Health Director answers to elected officials,” Holst said.

July 14 Meeting

Holst said the proposed Public Health Ordinance will be the only thing on the agenda July 14.

After public input, the county board will debate the ordinance and will hold a first reading of the ordinance. If approved, it would move to a second reading, likely at the regular July County Board meeting on July 28 at 7 p.m.

“We’ll do two readings on this. There won’t be a final vote on it that night (July 14),” said Holst. “That will be the first reading.”