Kansas City’s mask mandate is back on the table this week. Here’s what you should know
Kansas City’s mask mandate is once again up for debate.
The Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee will hear the ordinance at 9 a.m. Wednesday that would extend the mandate to Oct. 7. It is currently slated to expire Sept. 23.
Morgan Said, chief of staff for Mayor Quinton Lucas, said in a statement that the Oct. 7 extension date “puts Kansas City and Jackson County in alignment, creating more consistency for our businesses, schools, and families.”
How to participate
Members of the public can participate in-person or email written testimony to the clerk’s office at public.testimony@kcmo.org. Written comments will be added to the public record.
It will be live-streamed on the city’s website at kcmo.gov and on the city’s YouTube channel. Kansas Citians can also watch Channel 2 on their cable system.
Next steps
After public testimony, the committee will vote on what to do with it. The public testimony helps the committee members make their decision of whether to pass the ordinance or not.
If the committee recommends passing the ordinance, it will head to the full council at 3 p.m. on Thursday. Then, the council could vote to approve the ordinance.
Kansas City’s mandate, which went into effect on Aug. 2, applies to those over the age of 5 in indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status, with some exemptions.
Days after Kansas City’s mask mandate went into effect, anti-mask protesters gathered outside City Hall.
Due to new Missouri law, public health restrictions are required to be reviewed by the council every 30 days.
Local and national health experts have pointed to masks and vaccination as the most promising path toward controlling the pandemic.
Last month, the committee held a special sitting to take public testimony on the ordinance at the Kansas City Regional Police Academy. Nearly 100 people, mostly maskless, shared debunked COVID-19 myths and called the mandate tyrannical.
The Kansas City Council approved the extension last month with two council members — Brandon Ellington, District 3 at-large and Heather Hall, District 1 — voting no.
The data behind it
On Friday, the seven-day rolling average for daily cases in the Kansas City metropolitan area was 493, according to data tracked by The Star.
To date, more than 190,412 cases have been recorded and 2,725 people have died.
A report submitted alongside the ordinance by interim director of the Kansas City Health Department Frank Thompson cites state data saying that daily average cases have increased more than 635% since the first week of June to mid-September. The report says 97% of Missouri counties have been designated as experiencing high levels of community transmission.
Kansas City’s case rate is two times the threshold set by the Centers for Disease Control for designation as a high transmission area, the report said.
The report also said the surge of the delta variant cases “exceeded the investigation capacity” of the health department, meaning the department had to prioritize which cases they investigated.
