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Open letter to Mayor Hayes:

On July 13 I pleaded for the restoration of Zoom to town meetings in part because of the WHO announcement (July 13th) about the danger of the delta variant. I said this to you, the council, and a crowd of 45 mostly unmasked citizens at Maple Hall.

On July 15, two cases of the delta variant were announced by Dr. Howard Leibrand of Skagit County Health.

I made the case for safety, for parents of little kids, and for immunocompromised citizens. I suppose you and your colleagues didn’t hear any of that. Others spoke to the same issue.

Now that things are worse, you persist with in-person meetings. Why?

Yesterday I got a message from Jeni Platte, a mother of two children with profound special needs. “I would like to know what’s happening in town,” she said (but) “their level of care (and now with COVID-19 increased health risks) prevents me from attending face to face events.”

Other young people have voiced the same concern and yet you persist.

Surely you must know that Zoom is safer than any masked event. And yet you persist.

Urgently,

Linda Talman

La Conner