The Tisbury board of health voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to require masks in all town buildings until Labor Day. The vote came with the stipulation the board could rescind the order before Labor Day if it so chose. The board also voted unanimously to require town meeting attendees, who will gather under a tent at the Tisbury School, to wear masks. However later Tuesday evening a town official expressed a desire to compare Tisbury’s stance to the nation’s on mask requirements.
During a discussion of future events in town, Tisbury select board members were surprised to learn that health agent Maura Valley had emailed administrative assistant Alexandra BenDavid and town administrator Jay Grande to say that masks would be required inside town buildings through Labor Day.
The board had planned to return to in-person meetings on June 15, select board chair Jim Rogers said. “If the national movement is not to have masks, I’d like to further that conversation if we could,” he said.
Grande said he would seek clarification from Valley about whether masks would be required for in-person meetings.
The decision comes as the Island is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
Earlier at the board of health meeting, health agent Maura Valley made it clear the town isn’t out of the woods yet.
“Last week we had a lot of cases,” Valley told the board. “They look like they’ve gotten a little bit better over the last couple of days — fingers crossed — but I believe when the state issued their report on Thursday that Tisbury will be a red high risk community again. Hopefully it’s just a one week blip, but I don’t know. We’re really trying to concentrate our efforts on outreach and vaccination and hopefully soon we’ll see results from that.”
