City council candidates disagree on masks at the League of Women Voters forum

The League of Women Voters held a forum for the Moscow City Council candidates to discuss issues of COVID-19, non-discrimination and affordable housing.  

This is the second forum held this week by the LWV following Tuesday’s mayoral candidate forum.  

The city council candidates that attended were Melissa Cline, Steve Harmon, Hailey Lewis, Julia Parker, Gina Taruscio and Kyrk Taylor. Candidates Jason Stooks and Shaun Darveshi were not in attendance.

University of Idaho College of Law professor Richard Seamon was the moderator for this forum. 

COVID-19 

Most of the candidates agreed with the need for masks, vaccines, education and personal choice when it comes to fighting the virus. 

“One of the biggest things I would do is to educate folks to seriously consider the vaccine,” Taylor said. “I do recognize the right of individuals to make that decision themselves.”  

Masks were a focus of disagreement among candidates.  

Parker and Lewis both spoke in favor of the effectiveness of masks  

“It is protecting your neighbors, it’s protecting businesses that want to stay open, it’s protecting our health care resources,” Parker said.  

“Masks work, and if our hospital tells us masks and indoor mask guidance would be the difference between me getting in a car crash and seeing emergency services or not, I want them to feel heard and that recommendation be explored,” Lewis said.  

Harmon and Cline questioned the effectiveness and need for mask mandates. 

“Read your package, look at the studies of influenza and how masks are not helpful,” Harmon said. “Unfortunately, it is a politicalized opinion. It’s not political, really it’s fact-based.” 

“I am against mask mandates. I am against vaccine mandates,” Cline said. “I think it is a personal choice and that we don’t have any business pushing that on anyone.”  

Non-discrimination ordinance 

Seamon asked candidates if there should be a need to expand, narrow or maintain the ordinance as is. 

Lewis spoke about there being no need to change it at the moment. However, expressing that if any group is facing discrimination, to bring the issue up.  

Harmon talked about being skeptical of a government body giving special treatment to specific people. 

“Hopefully, we are loving all our neighbors in a way that we are not discriminating against them (or) against any of these things,” Harmon said. 

Harmon emphasized that everyone should be treated equally with respect. Taylor also expressed the need not to create more barriers, but to be able to provide fair treatment.  

Taruscio spoke on the responsibility of the city council’s role in giving people the chance to be heard.  

“It is important to remember that we all are guaranteed those rights,” Taruscio said. “We are all part of this community, and we all have the right to be heard and act in our own self-interest.” 

Affordable housing 

Lewis expressed the possible concern of having the city government be involved with the free market of development. Lewis also spoke on what can be done to have developers be aware of the city’s needs for water and energy efficiency.  

“I’m a little hesitant to create requirements or more hoops for developers to jump through,” Lewis said. “I don’t think it would help us in the long run for affordable housing.  

Harmon’s goal is to incentivize developers to create an environment for affordability, while also being careful not to favor specific developers over others. 

“The easiest way to do that is zoning and building code that affects everyone equally,” Harmon said.  

Parker discussed possible federal, state and nonprofit programs like the affordable housing trust. The use of incentives of smaller housing increases the diversity of the homes being built. Smaller homes are efficient in power usage and zero-scaped homes are efficient for water conservation. 

Taylor agreed but said that Moscow needs more homes. 

Taruscio spoke about the steps the current city government has made to address these issues with a housing study to find solutions on code and ordinance changes. 

“We got our toe in the water of ideas for incentives and things like that,” Taruscio said. “It is a regional group, so what floats in Washington doesn’t float in Idaho.”  

Correction: This article was updated to correct the wording of Lewis’ quote on masks for accuracy.

Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @DVR_Tweets