No mask, no service: Should Prairie Village require face coverings in public places?

To protect others from germs, you cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. During a viral pandemic such as this — when even people with no symptoms can be carrying the coronavirus — shouldn’t every breath be given such weight?

Absolutely. That’s why the Prairie Village City Council is right to join an exploding number of cities around the nation that are drafting ordinances requiring face coverings in buildings that cater to the public.

It’s an unprecedented move during an unrivaled moment, to be sure. There are understandable concerns about the cost and enforcement burdens a face-covering law would place on police officers and business owners. And no one wants to see a spectacle like the Dallas salon owner jailed for violating shutdown orders.

Prairie Village Police Chief Tim M. Schwartzkopf, who opposes the proposed law, is wary of hits to his department’s reputation and to civic cohesion that could arise from police-citizen confrontations over the failure to wear masks in stores. That’s why he pledges an education-based approach to enforcement, not a punitive one.

“It would not be our intent at all to take somebody into custody for not wearing a face mask,” the chief said. “We don’t want to come off heavy-handed. As the most visible form of government, we have spent a lot of time for many years developing what I would call excellent relationships with our community. I would hate to see that diminished.”

Nor is the ordinance a done deal. Legal staff have been asked to draft a measure for consideration by the council May 18 or before that would, to the extent legally permissible, require covering one’s nose and mouth in the city’s stores and public businesses.

Councilwoman Jori Nelson, who made the motion for the ordinance at the council meeting May 4, makes an eminently compelling case for it — citing CDC and state recommendations to wear them in public, and astutely likening it to both the famous “No shirt, no shoes, no service” restrictions in many shops and the city’s 2008 nonsmoking ordinance.

“Wearing a mask is the most effective thing for people to do to protect others from you,” Nelson told her council colleagues. “It is not about protecting you from others. It’s not for you. It’s for those around you.”

The problem is, while many people already choose to wear masks in public, plenty of others don’t. Those folks not only create the fear of infection in others, but potentially the infection itself. And it’s in small stores with narrow aisles, a staple of Prairie Village life, where such fears are most at hand — among a population, the city itself noted in a 2018 profile, that has a relatively high proportion of older, more vulnerable residents.

“It is not enough to strongly encourage people to wear masks,” says Councilman Ron Nelson, “because, as we have already seen, there are too many people who either are not self-aware or not considerate of other people and other people’s concerns and needs, or who just outright will do anything if they’re told not to do it.”

He’s inclined to support the ordinance, depending on the written details, and says 75% of his constituents’ emails and 100% of passersby on his daily walks back it.

For his part, Mayor Eric Mikkelson may ultimately support the requirement, though he has expressed concerns about its enforceability and its uniqueness among neighboring cities. And he has noted that other than a recent spike at Brighton Gardens nursing facility, Prairie Village has seen a downward trend in local COVID-19 cases.

Now, before the council votes, constituent feedback will have the greatest impact — perhaps more so than on most issues, due to the urgent, universal nature of this question.

But rest assured, wearing masks in public is a thing, and a surging one at that. From Seattle and Los Angeles to New York, a growing number of cities are instituting or examining face-cover mandates. In fact, Jori Nelson sent her colleagues more than a dozen examples of city and state mask-wearing requirements, which could inform Prairie Village’s draft ordinance in the coming days.

Next time you’re out in public, imagine yourself — or those around you — coughing or sneezing with every step. That would be no fun at any time, but would certainly be on the ghastly side about now.

Wearing a mask during the coronavirus outbreak is about courtesy to others. But it’s about so much more. It’s about the health and safety of those around you — and perhaps a matter of their life or death. Or yours.

If we can’t be persuaded to do this simple thing to protect ourselves and others, must we be compelled?