After rejecting a much more robust defense of individual liberties when it comes to the threat of compulsory COVID vaccines, the Ketchikan Borough Assembly passed a separate measure that included an amendment which “recognizes that vaccination is non-compulsory.”
It states, “that merchants and other service providers in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough are urged to refrain from discriminating against any individual by denying that person access to goods or services based upon their COVID-19 vaccination status or failure to provide that information, there is an affirmative right under law to choose to opt out, and that citizens opting out ought not to be discriminated against for so choosing to be vaccinated or not.”
The resolution was approved at the Dec. 21 Assembly meeting.
Earlier in the evening Borough Mayor Rodney Dial made a pitch for his original resolution, after no Assembly member would agree to bring it to the floor for consideration. He said his intent of introducing the draft was born of concern that local businesses might refuse goods and services to citizens based on their vaccination status. Dial’s original ordinance made a strong defense of personal liberties granted by our Creator, the right to privacy and the need to never trade “treasured constitutional protections for the comfort of perceived safety.”
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The approved resolution did not include any of this language but did incorporate some of the mayor’s concerns about the vaccine being “non-compulsory.” Unlike Dial’s original resolution, the one that passed contained a direct plug for all residents to get vaccinated.
It stated: “The Ketchikan Gateway Borough encourages its citizens to avail themselves of the COVID-19 vaccine, that citizens need to make an educated decision that doing this is right for them, in order to reopen our community.”
