At Tuesday's Supervisor's meeting, a topic that had been buzzing around Vinton the week in the county departments was whether or not the county was going to mandate COVID vaccines. Talking to people who are county employees, there was some concern if this was going to be the case.

Supervisor Rick Primmer clarified the issue at the meeting under Reports. Citing President Biden's mandate that any employer with more than 100 employees must require their employees to be vaccinated, Primmer said if those employees chose not to be vaccinated, they would have to provide at least once a week a negative sample to show that they did not have the COVID virus.

He said that he and the board had received messages and some saying that he wasn't looking out for the citizens of Benton County. "We ARE looking out for their best interest," he said.

He was given information which he shared with the board from Heartland the county's insurance provider. He read, "Item 3. Counties that have received federal funding from the CARES ACT," he paused and questioned how much money that would be. "I don't know how much money we got from the CARES ACT, the sheriff's office got it, I believe Scott Hanson's (Emergency Management), the courthouse has gotten it, so, there's several hundred thousand dollars there from the CARES ACT, and the American Rescue Plan, which if I'm correct is 4.9 million. So our county has received both of those.

It goes on to item 4. Counties as employers are subject to impending rule from OSHA as employers with 100 employees.

It shows in Item 5 that Iowa is one of the states that follow the OSHA-approved state plans." He said the material gave him a website that he went to and it says that, "The Iowa state plan also applies to state and local government employers."

"I don't think we want to pay back almost 5 million dollars, we haven't got it all yet. But it is a possibility," he said. "There is a vaccine playbook" that Primmer printed out. "I'm not saying I'm in favor of any of this guys, not at all," he continued. "What I'm stating is that Heartland will keep us informed as to what is going to happen."

Primmer said in an email from Heartland, by Nathan Berry, Primmer read, "The information on COVID policy and current temporary standard. Nothing is official with the standard and I would not expect anything to be official for at least 3-6 months."

Primmer added, "You now know what I know. If this is shoved down our throats this is not going to be pretty. My emails and Facebook messages have been, blowing up. I'm not the bad guy here. I just put it on the agenda to make everybody aware. I'm not in support one way or the other on this thing."

Earlier Primmer had added this on as an agenda item, but later had it removed because he said, "I sure didn't think we wanted to have a houseful here over something that first of all, we know very little about, second of all we have not a lot of control over," he said.

"You got the information. Read up on it because I don't know how the hell we're going to pay for your towers," Primmer said motioning to the sheriff, "other than a bond issue if we can't take that money if we say we're not going to comply. And that's going to affect the tax payers on their property tax. 

I think a lot of this is waiting to see what Governor Reynolds is going to have us do with OSHA, whether or not they are going to enforce it. There's a lot of funding, state and federal. One person said, "So what if we don't have one more bridge?" Primmer asked, "well is it your bridge or your bridge?"

"Do we want to give these 2.9 million dollars back? I don't. Will it piss people off? Heartland is trying to stay on top of it and will advise counties what to do."

Then he made a motion to adjourn.





Comments

Submit a Comment

Please refresh the page to leave Comment.

Still seeing this message? Press Ctrl + F5 to do a "Hard Refresh".