Baker City Council decides to fight back against mandates

By Shannon Weidemann (McKone) on Wednesday, August 25th, 2021 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News Eastern/Southeast Oregon Top Stories

BAKER CITY – During last night’s Baker City Council meeting the council made the decision to fight back against the mandates that are being implemented on citizens from Governor Kate Brown due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Those who spoke to the council came from across the county from all walks of life including medical personnel, those who do home care, local business owners and even a medically compromised citizen, to name a few. Overwhelmingly the sentiments were the same. The state (Governor) should not be mandating that people receive the COVID vaccine or risk losing their jobs. Whether or not to get the vaccine should be at the discretion of each individual person.

Today Baker City Mayor Kerry McQuisten issued the following letter.

“Dear Oregonians,

Last night, Baker City Council decided to fight back. Again.

We have instructed our city manager to seek expert legal counsel. We are exploring a multi-plaintiff or even class action lawsuit with the hopes of saving our staff prior to Governor Kate Brown’s October 18 deadline. Time is short.

If you represent a city, union, county, or other organization who may be interested in joining as a plaintiff, please contact Jon Cannon at Baker City Hall. If you have already begun a similar process further along that we might join, contact Jon. If enough of us join together in this effort, it will help make the costs bearable for all involved.

If you are a constitutional sheriff in Oregon, let it be known you will not enforce or respond to calls to enforce these mandates.

If you are an OSHA employee, can you really allow yourself to continue being used against other citizens in this way? I know this is not what you signed on for.

Governor Kate Brown’s mandates have the potential to collapse our state.

Again, I come back to the reality that IF EVERY CITY IN OREGON WOULD REFUSE TO COMPLY, THIS WOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY.

We are faced with obeying these mandates and seeing our city financially destroyed with key services necessary for people’s survival closing – or defying the mandates and seeing our city financially destroyed through punitive fines of $500 per incident per day and legal bills.

Kate Brown is saying you will be destroyed… or you will be destroyed. We’d rather go down fighting.

She has declared war against small cities across Oregon by attacking the first responders and health care professionals who helped at the front lines all last year. She is saying to obey or lose their jobs, licenses, and ability to earn a living in the future. She has used them, and now she will toss them aside.

Without these people, other people will die.

These mandates do nothing to stop the spread of COVID. This is a virus. It’s here to stay. Kate Brown has failed, for a year and a half, to increase bed capacity, focus on preventative early-treatment clinics, or take any number of healthcare measures that would have been different from her failed approach last year. WHY?

As our governor likes to say, LET ME BE CLEAR.

We are losing nurses at our local hospitals and hospices, when we already had a shortage. This further reduces our ability to respond to the sick during a crisis.

Our rural fire departments will close.

Our small, private adult care facilities are folding like houses of cards around our area, putting special needs residents out onto the streets.

Much, if not all, of our city fire department will walk.

Our prisons may not have enough personnel to safely operate.

ODF. DHS. OSP, ODOT, DMV, the employment office … Think, for just a moment, of the core services these offices provide.

We are hearing from school districts who will not have enough teaching staff on hand to operate this fall.

And on. And on.

I’ve heard from dedicated teachers, medical doctors, eye doctors, dentists, chiropractors, etc. who are preparing for their licenses to be revoked, at which case they plan to go underground to practice. They know they will be needed.

Is this the Oregon you want to live in? Where good people are made into criminals?

I am calling on all good leaders in the state to stand up.”