Credit Christine Trudeau / KYUK
In their May 11 meeting, Bethel City Council voted unanimously to extend four COVID-19 related emergency mandates by two more months.
There’s the mandate that acknowledges the pandemic as an ongoing emergency, and a measure that prevents water shutoff for households with unpaid water bills. There’s also a measure that requires unvaccinated travelers to adhere to strict social distancing for their first seven days in Bethel. They must also present a negative test within 72 hours of arrival, and should test seven days after arrival as well.
Bethel City Council also upheld its indoor and indoor-adjacent public spaces mask mandate for two more months. Just two days later, on May 13, the CDC updated its guidelines for masks in indoor spaces. The organization now says that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors in most situations.
Credit Christine Trudeau / KYUK
At their May 11 meeting, Bethel City Council could vote to extend four COVID-19 emergency measures for another two months. Up for extension is the declaration that recognizes COVID-19 as an emergency, the mandate requiring masks to be worn in indoor public spaces, and the mandate preventing water shut off for people with unpaid water bills.
Also up for extension is a COVID-19 emergency ordinance to continue travel-related testing and quarantine restrictions. Unvaccinated travelers must present a negative COVID-19 test either upon arriving to Bethel or within 72 hours. They must also take another test within seven days of arrival. In that same time frame, they must adhere to strict social distancing. This ordinance does not apply to fully-vaccinated travelers.
George Polk Award and an
Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for their for their two-year investigation into the expropriation of Indigenous lands for the land-grant university system.
In “Land-Grab Universities,” published in our March 2020 issue, Tristan (Kiowa), now editor-in-chief of the
Texas Observer, and Lee, who is at Cambridge University, located 99% of the nearly 11 million acres taken from 250 tribes through broken treaties, illegal seizures and outright genocide, and then transferred to fledgling land-grant colleges under the Morrill Act of 1862.
This “well-documented account sent shockwaves through campuses across the country where students and faculty demanded that institutions like MIT, Cornell and Cal-Berkeley find ways to right a 150- year-old wrong,” the Polk Award press release noted. IRE judges commented, “This investigation produced a foundational piece of journalism that forces a reckoning with dark origins of many of our nation’s u
Bethel’s Community Action Grant application period opened on May 1, and will close on May 31. Community Action Grants are funded by the alcohol sales tax.
Credit Christine Trudeau / KYUK
Bethel City Council’s vote on a tax on sugary beverages has been indefinitely postponed. The decision was made after extensive public comment at the April 27 city council meeting. The move effectively kills the proposed ordinance unless a council member chooses to resurrect it for a future meeting.
There were nearly four hours of public testimony, both for and against the proposed tax, which would have added a 1-cent-per-ounce tax to sugar-sweetened beverages. As an excise tax, it would have been applied directly to the distributor, but many argued that the cost would have been passed onto the consumer.