City Council Weighs Emergency COVID Orders Versus Educating & Enforcement Of Businesses

Staff Reports

After Midnight on February 03, 2021, the San Marcos City Council discussed Consent agenda item 14, “Hold discussion and provide direction to staff related to the passage of one or more emergency orders related to the current disaster declaration stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The city council discussed ways to be more proactive in preventing the spread of COVID-19 by implementing Emergency Orders. 

Councilmember Maxfield Baker brought the item forward to discuss ways the city could enforce mask requirements and other more aggressive measures. 

“I think we can do a better job just doing more proactive strategies in general,” Councilmember Alyssa Garza said. “I think it’s difficult for police officers to do proactive strategies due to the nature of their jobs. But, for the city as a whole, that is an area of growth; partnerships are supercritical.”

Council Member Shane Scott agreed that the city should look at producing informative videos.

“Do something that is going to get to the hearts of the people and something they can understand,” Scott said. “I think that’s going to do more.” 

Garza suggested the city look at distributing flyers and other informational documents regarding testing and vaccination opportunities. 

“Before we go harder on enforcement, we need to go harder on education,” Garza said. “There’s a lot of things that can be done that I think haven’t been done.” 

Baker said he would like to direct staff, with the council’s consensus, to work with code compliance to ensure health and safety concerns regarding COVID-19 are at the forefront of these operating businesses. 

Baker explained his rationale was in relation to the Governor’s orders that include safety measures such as tables being six-feet apart or patrons being placed at tables six-feet from other guests. 

“In previous presentations, I think we have that officers are not allowed to get in the back of the house like code compliance is,” Baker said.

“What we are talking about are environmental health personnel, not code compliance,” Director of Public Safety Chase Stapp said. “There’s a very small handful of them.”

Stapp said he would research what the department’s capacity was but asked the council to note that if something is not written in the list of state statutes that they are in charge of enforcing, then they may not have the ability to do anything. 

Stapp noted that while capacity and spacing of tables were identified in the Governor’s order, it was not listed in the State Fire Code, which is enforced by the city Fire Department. 

Mayor Jane Hughson asked staff to delve deeper into exactly what the city could enforce before they attempted to implement any enforcement plans. 

“I think everybody is confused on what we can actually enforce,” Hughson said. “We need to some more clarity on that.” 

Councilmember Saul Gonzales said he would like to see enforcement be complaint-driven when it came to local restaurants and businesses. 

Mayor Hughson “I’d just like to give our police department credit because that’s what they have a history of doing in many many many cases, so that’s not going to be a new concept for them.”

Councilmembers Melissa Derrick and Baker expressed interest in an emergency order, if necessary, to allow the city to begin ticketing people or to have Code Enforcement or somebody look into it. 

“I contend that we would be spending time and money on that lawsuit,” Hughson said. “When we could be spending our time and money on education and more positive things that might actually achieve more results.”

The council shared a consensus on focusing on education efforts versus issuing an order, which would risk a lawsuit from the state. 

“I think the way this is written right now; there is really no way to enforce it or to get away with not upsetting the governor and getting sued,” Garza said. 

Baker noted that an emergency order wouldn’t necessarily defy the Governor’s Executive Order.