Huntington Beach City Council meetings to stay virtual indefinitely
Huntington Beach City Council meetings will be staying virtual indefinitely after council members again failed to agree on mask usage during a special meeting Monday night.
The City Council was scheduled to reopen the chambers for the regularly scheduled April 4 meeting and met Monday to discuss COVID-19 protocols put together by City Manager Oliver Chi that would be in place going forward. But as he has since he was elected last November, Mayor Pro Tem Tito Ortiz said he would not wear a mask.
Ortiz logged off from the meeting after an hour at 6 p.m., citing a prior engagement. Councilman Erik Peterson, who also did not wear a mask in the chambers prior to the meetings going virtual, did not attend the meeting at all.
As a result, neither were a part of the 5-0 vote to keep council meetings virtual indefinitely. The motion was made by Councilman Dan Kalmick after Ortiz stated he would choose to show up to council meetings maskless, instead of joining in on Zoom while his colleagues participated in person.
“I’ll show up and do my job,” Ortiz said. “If I get escorted out by the police for not wearing a mask, that’s you guys’ choice.” He went on to say he lives a “normal life” and that he feels that he’s being persecuted because he won’t wear a mask.
Ortiz said his goal was not to “raise hell.” But Mayor Kim Carr, who called Ortiz’s position “almost selfish,” said she would not allow the spectacle of him possibly creating a scene.
“This is a job,” Carr said. “At your job, you’ve got to wear a mask. You have mentioned many, many times that you wanted to be a police officer here in Huntington Beach, and our police officers are wearing masks. If you were fortunate enough to become an officer, you would be required to wear a mask ... And we don’t have separate rules for council members just because you won an election. It doesn’t make you special.”
Ortiz said he hasn’t worn a mask since last April and has been near people who had the coronavirus, yet hasn’t caught it himself. Kalmick and Councilwoman Natalie Moser, however, responded that his reasoning represented an anecdotal fallacy.
“Just because it’s happened to you doesn’t mean it’s statistically relevant,” Kalmick said. “It’s like saying, ‘Every car accident I’ve seen, people were wearing seat belts, so I’m not going to wear a seat belt.’”
Huntington Beach City Council meetings have been virtual since January. Ortiz was barred from entering a strategic planning meeting at the Central Library on Jan. 7 because he would not wear a mask. He participated from the parking lot, via Zoom.
Orange County moved into the orange tier for reopening on Wednesday. If the council had resumed in-person meetings, about 50 members of the public could attend in the orange tier, according to a presentation by Chi.
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