— 14,000 people in seven days — Bring on the lawyers. That's the next stage in the duel between Erie County and the Village of Williamsville, after the county Health Department cited the village for not enforcing mask rules.
Led by Mayor Deb Rogers, the village and some of its residents are fighting back against state and local rules requiring masks for everyone down to 2-year-olds. That includes Village Board members not wearing masks or not wearing them properly during last week's meeting.
Not only was the meeting online, the County Health Department had a sanitarian in the room.
Thursday evening, the Village Board has another meeting, to hire a lawyer to fight back against the $300 fine. In his COVID-19 briefing Tuesday, County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the village is breaking the rules.
"This would be, to my knowledge, the first incident. We have multiple incidents that have occurred in the Village of Williamsville, where not only the village mayor, but others were not wearing a mask," Poloncarz said. "We had sanitarians on site during the most recent meeting. They took notes. They took information and the village was cited for violating the rules."
In notifying the village of the fine, Environmental Health Services Director Jennifer Delaney said there will be a hearing on the fine and if the village chooses not to pay the $300, it faces much larger fines at a hearing — up to $1,000 for each violation. And, of course, there are potentially large legal fees.
"They have violated through repeated violations," Poloncarz said. "They created an unsafe environment by having a public meeting where the public is invited and the village mayor is not wearing a mask, as well as others and we know that Omicron is spread very, very quickly and it is deadly."
The mask mandates are becoming more controversial in these times of the Omicron variant, which is infecting vast numbers of people — 14,000 county residents in seven days — although Poloncarz said Tuesday that it seems to have peaked and cases are starting to go downhill. That's part of an international pattern with Omicron, which should take some pressure off the healthcare system in coming weeks.
"Five-point-six percent of Erie County residents had a lab-confirmed COVID-19 positive case during the past 4 weeks. We certainly have seen a lot of COVID in Erie County, just like the whole country has during the past month," he said. "It's still a burden on the hospitals when they identify that someone is COVID-19 positive, because they have to put them in a different ward. You can't have a COVID-19-positive patient in with a non-COVID-19 patient."
Erie County hospitals remain packed at 85% capacity, although Poloncarz said it varies a lot by facility.
