Here’s Horry County Council’s decision on whether to keep mask ordinance in place

It’s official: You still have to wear a face mask when you go out in public.

After an impassioned debate Tuesday evening, Horry County Council voted to uphold a controversial mandate requiring that residents and visitors wear face masks, or other face coverings, in public places like grocery stores, pharmacies and stores.

The mandate will remain in effect until Oct. 30 and affects all of the unincorporated areas in Horry County, including Socastee, Carolina Forest, Little River, Bucksport, Longs and Garden City. Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach and Conway all have separate face mask mandates that are currently in effect.

The mandate requires all people in Horry County to wear a face covering — whether a medical or surgical mask, scarf, bandanna, cloth mask or gaiter — if they’re entering a public place such as a grocery store, restaurant, retail business, salon or tattoo parlor. The order does not require masks to be worn in public places that are outdoors, such as parks and beaches.

County police are responsible for enforcing the mandate, though businesses are required to place “conspicuous” signs outside reminding people to wear a mask inside. To date though, county police have issued no citations to people not wearing masks. Penalties for violating the ordinance range from $25 for a first offense to $100 for third and continuous offenses. As of Tuesday afternoon, Horry County has seen 9,945 positive cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and 193 deaths. A total of 814 people have been hospitalized with the illness.

The mask mandate also includes several exemptions. For example, people who can’t safely wear a face covering due to age or an underlying health condition, as well as those can’t remove a face covering without assistance of others, don’t have to wear a mask. Similarly, people whose religious beliefs prevent them from covering their faces and those who need to communicate with a hearing impaired person aren’t required to wear one either.

People are also permitted to remove their masks while dining at a restaurant, engaged in “strenuous exercise” at a gym and when a barber, hair stylist or other professional requires access to the face to perform a service, like a haircut. Masks may also be removed if a police officer or other first-responder directs a person to do so.

A controversial ordinance

The mask mandate has been controversial from its inception in July, and more so in recent weeks as council voted to extend the measure at its Sept. 1 meeting, and then signaled it could backtrack the next day. At that Sept. 1 meeting, County Council Chairman Johnny Gardner placed the face mask ordinance on council’s consent agenda, a portion of the agenda reserved for already-debated and other non-controversial legislation. Council rules allow members to vote on all legislation on the consent agenda at once, meaning they don’t debate each item, allowing for swifter action at meetings. When it came time to vote on the consent agenda two weeks ago, Councilman Al Allen objected, saying that the mask mandate should not have been placed on the consent agenda in the first place. After a vote to remove the mandate from the consent agenda failed, he said council’s vote amounted to “tyranny.”

“It is terrible and it is tyranny to try to slide something like this over the people of Horry County by putting it in the consent agenda,” Allen said then.

The next morning, Gardner posted on Facebook that he planned to introduce legislation at Council’s next meeting to end the mask mandate, as a way to allow members to debate the matter more fully.

“This is not about whether the face mask resolution should have passed,” he wrote. “This is about whether council should have been allowed to debate the issue.”

Council’s move to uphold the mandate, then, came via a convoluted vote: A majority of councilors voted against a measure that would have ended the mandate, allowing the mandate to continue. Councilors Tyler Servant, Gary Loftus, Dennis DiSabato, Bill Howard, Harold Worley, Orton Bellamy and Cam Crawford voted to keep the mask mandate in place, while councilors Al Allen, Danny Hardee, W. Paul Prince, Johnny Vaught and Chairman Johnny Gardner voted to remove it.

As if signaling how they would vote ahead of time, Council members Servant, Loftus, DiSabato, Howard, Worley, Bellamy and Crawford all wore face masks during the meeting. The other members did not wear face coverings.

Voting to strike down the mask mandate, and reversing his July vote, Gardner said he appreciated the debate that council members had Tuesday night.

“Before, we had some concerns from medical people that they were trying to flatten the curve,” Gardner said Tuesday, explaining why he voted to end the mandate. “It’s been 60-plus days and I haven’t had any more reports or requests or anything so I voted the way I thought. I thought it had been enough time.”

Prior to the council meeting, however, Pat Hartley, the clerk to County Council, forwarded a joint statement from Horry County medical professionals urging people to wear face masks to every member of council, including Gardner. The statement was originally issued in July, and recirculated Tuesday, according to the email.

The mask debate

As he had promised, Gardner opened the floor for council members to debate the mask mandate at the front end of Tuesday’s meeting, starting with those opposed and then allowing those in favor to speak. Council members Vaught, Allen and, later, Prince spoke in opposition to the mandate. Council members Howard, Loftus and DiSabato spoke in favor.

Relating a recent conversation he had with a passerby who asked why he doesn’t wear a mask, Vaught, whose district includes Forestbrook and Coastal Carolina University, said he doesn’t believe masks are effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19.

“I don’t believe you are protecting me by wearing a mask, but if that’s your choice then that’s fine,” he said.

He also questioned the mask ordinance’s effectiveness.

“To me, we have a law out there that is meaningless because obviously people are not following the law, but we’re not arresting them for it,” Vaught said. “We’re taking people’s rights away. You’re taking my right away to not wear a mask.”

Allen, who represents Aynor and most of western Horry County, spoke next, quoting the Bible and invoking the Founding Fathers. He also argued that if the county wished to prevent resident deaths, it should instead outlaw alcohol and cigarettes.

“Let’s outlaw something that’s really going to make an effect and not just a window dressing. We’ve got folks in this county, in this state, in this country who stand to lose everything that they’ve ever worked for because of people just falling in line. Going along to get along. Our country was not founded by men who chose to go along to get along,” Allen argued.

Citing his faith, Allen said that he wasn’t opposed to people wearing face masks but took issue with the government mandating the practice.

“Is your mask working? Fine. I will never make never make fun, I will never find fault of anybody who chooses to wear one, because that’s your right,” he said. “But don’t force your beliefs upon me because I choose not to, because I choose my faith.”

Allen, though, wasn’t able to persuade his fellow council members.

“Al, you really blew me away on some of the things you said. They were pretty much off the wall,” said Howard, who represents part of Myrtle Beach, and spoke in favor of the mandate.

Arguing that he, too, dislikes wearing a face mask out in public, Howard said that he does so nevertheless because he believes it protects himself and others. Representing one of the county’s tourist areas, he said that visitors could come from out of state and spread the virus to residents.

“I hate wearing the masks, I hate it, but I wear them everyday, in all of my businesses everywhere I go, in the grocery stores, I hate it,” he said. “But I know it’s making a difference, I know it’s saving, maybe one life, because I wear a mask. I just want everyone to know that we’re here to protect the people.”

Loftus, also arguing in favor of the mandate, read a note that a neighbor wrote. The note called on those in Horry County to wear a mask as a measure of personal responsibility.

“Imagine someone close to you, a child, a mother, a father, a grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, choking on a respirator alone without you or any family member allowed by the bedside,” Loftus read, in part, from the note. “Just ask yourself if you could have sucked it up a little bit, just for them.”

Citing Allen’s labeling the mandate “tyranny” DiSabato, who represents part of Myrtle Beach, said he was “fed up” with some of the points of view expressed by those against the mandate.

“The most frustrating part of this argument and this debate, in my opinion, is when people use words like tyranny, restriction of liberty, saying that our founding fathers would not have acted in the same way,” he said. “I’m a little fed up with the idea that we are being somehow unconstitutional by asking people to do something that makes common and the data has shown has been working.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2020 at 6:58 PM.