This letter is to voice our vehement objection to the sudden mask mandate, which contradicts Massachusetts guidelines, and which was decided and signed by a group of three Canton Board of Health members in an apparently covert meeting on August 30, 2021, without any constituent representation.

All this mandate will serve to do is drive Canton business patrons, particularly restaurant patrons, to neighboring towns that have no such regulations. This negatively affects businesses that have already been irreparably financially damaged in this pandemic.

If patrons feel more comfortable wearing a mask when they enter a business, they are free to do so and that is their prerogative. We, of course, support their personal decisions. It is unfair, however, to make businesses into the “mask police,” who must then enforce this locally dictated policy that we neither endorse nor is supported by our own State guidelines.

The BOH made this post-facto decision to (statedly) engender local businesses’ support to “help end the pandemic.” While this is a noble goal on a global scale, the situation in Canton does not warrant such a departure from State guidelines. Local businesses were not consulted, and it is not supported by local businesses.

As reported on the Town of Canton website on 9/3:  For the period between 8/27 and 9/2/2021, there were 15 reported new cases in our town with a population of 24,370 (5.6 percent of whom are under the age of 5).  These new reported cases represent 0.06 percent of the population of Canton.

This mask mandate is not going to obliterate COVID-19, or its current and future permutations. These types of measures will, however, obliterate small businesses by hindering our operations and forcing patrons elsewhere.