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City of Odessa looking at options to have businesses enforce a mask mandate

The growing number of COVID cases in the community are forcing city leaders to ask themselves if they'll enforce that mandate locally and if so, how.

ODESSA, Texas — The number of positive covid-19 cases in the community is continuing to rise. 

Citizens have been calling on city leaders to do more to control the spread, but Odessa city leaders are saying that legally, their hands are tied. 

The Odessa City Council met and discussed what their next steps should be to try and control the spread within their legal limit. 

You see signs outside of nearly every business stating that masks are required as part of a state mandate.

On the other hand, the growing number of COVID cases in the community are forcing city leaders to ask themselves if they'll enforce that mandate locally, and if so, how.

Legally the city is limited on what they're allowed to do. 

Numbers for the region on the Texas Department of Emergency Management's website tell city leaders whether or not they can require businesses to reduce capacity to 50%. 

So far, the numbers aren't there yet, but that's where they're trending towards. 

If city leaders don't follow those legal limitations and try to do something like shut the city down, they could find themselves being sued, similar to the situation in El Paso, Texas. 

This all leads back to that term that's been thrown around time and time again since the pandemic began, personal responsibility. 

City leaders are leaving it up to business owners to enforce the mask mandate on their own so that spiking COVID-19 numbers won't force the council to have to reduce business's occupancy down to 50%. 

Right now Mayor Turner has the council exploring avenues by which a mask mandate would be able to be enforced at the individual business level. 

The plan is the Mayor will work with city staff in order to explore the most viable option for a business mask mandate.  

The city's ideal scenario though has "help and cooperation of all businesses to voluntarily enforce the mandate at their stores for the protection of their customers and staff."

    

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