The Board of Directors of the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library has instituted a 21-day mask mandate for visitors and patrons, effective Friday.
The board made the decision during a special meeting Tuesday.
“It is a mask order, but also includes a suspension of children’s programming for children under the age of 12 because those under 12 cannot be vaccinated,” said Library Director Sue Crites-Szostak.
“It’s to protect the children and to protect the patrons as a whole,” Crites-Szostak added.
The order, she said, also will serve to protect library staff.
“As I tell people often, if one of our staff gets sick, we’re closed because we have to go into quarantine,” she said.
The mask order, Crites-Szostak said, will be enforced at both library locations.
It follows on the heels of a 30-day order, which expired Thursday.
“Our 30 days expires Sept. 9, and the board has re-instituted a 21-day mandate to begin Sept. 10. It will run through Sept. 30,” she said.
The reason for a 21-day mandate versus a 30-day version, she said, was because of a new state statute.
“Previously, when we were under the emergency order, which expired Aug. 31, we could institute it for 30 days,” Crites-Szostak said, “but the law changed as to how you can institute a mask mandate.
“Once the emergency order went out, we could only do 21 days, and those 21 days had to be with six of nine board members voting yes.”
The library initiated a mask mandate during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Crites-Szostak said, but it “was rescinded when COVID cases started improving in late April or early May” of this year.
A second mandate became effective Aug. 7 as the Delta variant of the virus took hold in the region.
If the library board wants to institute another mask mandate beyond Sept. 30, Crites-Szostak said, “we have to follow the same process.”
There already has been some pushback on the mask decision, Crites-Szostak said, but “the choice we’re making … we think it’s better to stay open and attempt to try to keep people as safe as possible.
“When we hopefully see cases start to go down, and also when we see children can get vaccinated, we’ll consider a change.”