Some Ouray County business owners are calling on elected officials to require masks indoors, citing confrontations with visitors who refuse to follow the businesses’ rules.
Local governments thus far have encouraged — but not required — people to wear face coverings, leaving it up to individual business owners to decide whether they’ll require customers to wear them and how they’ll enforce that decision. Expectations vary from business to business, creating conflicting messages for people shopping in town and fueling conflict with some business owners.
The debate comes as Ouray County approaches the peak of its tourist season, with many of those visitors coming from states that have looser COVID-19 restrictions and are experiencing some of the largest spikes in infections in the country. That has some locals raising concerns about potential virus spread here.
INCIDENTS
The Ouray Police Department has received two reports of mask-related incidents in which customers and businesses sparred over masks. If a customer is asked to wear a mask and refuses to comply or leave, he can be cited for trespassing, Chief Jeff Wood said. That hasn’t happened yet, in part because the reports received so far have involved patrons who ultimately left when they were asked. Just as businesses can require customers to wear shirts and shoes, they can demand that customers wear masks to shop, he said.
Molly Wright, who works at Ouray Shirt Company, said she occasionally has to remind customers to wear their masks in the store. For the most part, people are compliant, or only briefly argumentative.
But on June 21, she said, she was threatened after telling a man to mask up or leave the shop.
The customer began arguing with her about “the real science” behind masks, becoming “borderline belligerent,” said Wright, 17. When she told him it was store policy and he needed to leave, she said he argued with her and threatened her. Wright didn’t call the police, but her mother reported it the next day.
The same afternoon, the same man was asked to leave other stores for arguing with staff about masks.
Ouray Bookshop co-owner Amy Exstrum said he came into her shop and immediately asked if he had to observe the “ridiculousness” of wearing a mask, and she said they were recommended and she had free ones for his family.
He didn’t accept the masks, but she allowed him into the shop and he continued to speak loudly about his disagreement with mask requirements. Another customer engaged him when he announced he was a doctor and said masks aren’t effective, and Exstrum interrupted.
“Science is not an opinion,” Exstrum told him. “Science is factual.”
Exstrum said the man became argumentative and after at least 15 minutes, she asked him to leave. She later learned he visited other shops and argued about masks there.
“Apparently he was on a mission and had an agenda,” she said.
That customer, identified on surveillance video from Gator Emporium, where he also argued with an employee, was Dr. Jacob Sims, a chiropractor from Montrose who visited Ouray with his family on Father’s Day.
He said he visited about six stores and confirmed he was asked to leave three of them for refusing to wear a mask, where he said he was trying to “have a dialogue.” Sims said the signs at stores requiring masks are “not a hard indication that it’s really required,” and he wanted to “see whether or not what the sign says was true.” He said store owners are not “understanding or educated” about masks, which he claimed are not effective, and believes that requiring masks is “not talking about science or medicine.”
Sims said he didn’t go into stores that had employees posted at the entrance enforcing the mask rule.
“That was a very easy situation to understand that they were going to enforce masks, so there was no reason to walk in the store,” he said.
He also said he thinks mask requirements infringe on his personal freedom.
“It’s discriminatory that I would have to wear something over my face in order to go into the store,” Sims said, comparing it to being denied service for “a skin color issue or a learning disability or if I were disabled or handicapped in some way.” He acknowledged getting into a “debate” with Exstrum but denied threatening Wright, calling the allegation “preposterous.”
Sims said he visits Ouray frequently but may rethink that now.
“I’ve always really liked Ouray, but I have to say after this particular experience I may not ever go back,” he said.
The second mask-related incident reported to police happened on June 24, when a family visiting from out of town had an altercation with Maggie’s Kitchen owner Tom Edder. According to police, the incident happened when customer Charles Maze’s face covering slipped when he was in the restaurant and Edder and Maze “exchanged words.” The family left the restaurant and Maze said Edder chased after them. Edder told police that Maze spilled hand sanitizer on the floor and touched bags of hamburger buns before leaving. Citations for disorderly conduct against both men were ultimately dropped, according to the police report.
Other business owners haven’t asked police to get involved in disputes over mask compliance but have had sporadic encounters with customers refusing to obey the restrictions or arguing with employees about the requirement.
“We get quite a few people who come in, and they’re happy to comply,” said Kathy Craig, owner of High Country Leathers. “But I do get people who refuse to wear masks and have had them come in coughing really loud, being really rude about it. That’s just not acceptable.” Others have yelled at her or her employees, she said.
Betty Rupp, who works at Gumpshun Junction, said one customer who didn’t want to wear a mask told her “this is dirty money” when he paid, then touched other items before leaving the store.
Ouray T-shirts and Mementos is not accepting returns due to the virus, which has angered some customers, owner Marc Hitchcox said.
“They were told they couldn’t return or exchange something, and a guy had a fit and pulled a bunch of stuff off the shelves,” he said.
Ouray City Councilor Ethan Funk said he’s seen employees struggling to convince customers to follow their rules, and a concerning number of people “who are not voluntarily complying.”
Though he didn’t want to weigh in on a possible ordinance, Funk said mask compliance is a factor in limiting virus spread, and that’s key to keeping places open for visitors and locals alike.
“If we keep the numbers down, we all get to be more open,” Funk said. If cases rise, the county could lose the flexibility of variances granted by the state and a pending request to increase pool capacity could be jeopardized. “This isn’t about individual people, this is about us collectively as a community.”
MASK RULE UP TO BUSINESSES
Many local stores require masks and have posted signs at their doors informing customers. Some are offering free masks or selling them for a dollar or two; most are also providing hand sanitizer.
Other stores, however, are not requiring masks, or have opted for a “requested but not required” approach.
Masks are optional at Columbine Gifts and Jewelry, which employee Phyllis Barker said people appreciate. She said less than half of the store’s shoppers still wear masks, though the store has no signs requiring it.
“It’s hard to breathe up here to start with, if you’re a tourist,” she said. “Just to have the option, I think people appreciate it.”
Both the Ouray City Council and Ridgway Town Council have passed resolutions encouraging people to wear masks, and Gov. Jared Polis last week urged locals and visitors to “embrace the mask-wearing culture” and “support the mask as a passport to the Colorado that we love and enjoy.” The state released a new ad campaign encouraging visitors to wear masks in public and to social distance. But because neither municipality has set rules requiring it, there are no public notices asking or urging visitors to wear masks, other than banners in Fellin Park and Hartwell Park that read, “Your mask protects me, my mask protects you.” Reopening plans for city, town and county buildings all require visitors to wear masks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend “all people 2 years of age and older wear a cloth face covering in public settings when around people outside of their household,” especially when maintaining distance is difficult. The masks, bandannas or other coverings “prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the cloth face covering coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice,” which can prevent people from transmitting the virus, whether or not they know they’re contagious.
Chief Wood, whose department is tasked with helping businesses enforce their restrictions, questioned the evidence that masks are effective, and said he personally chooses not to shop at stores that require masks.
He called for “mutual respect” between people who are wearing masks and those who are not, but said he supports businesses’ decisions to set their own rules and will enforce them when needed.
DEBATE OVER ORDINANCES VS. RECOMMENDATIONS
The lack of clear expectation for everyone to wear masks indoors is something that some business owners and locals have lobbied local governments to clarify with an ordinance requiring them – just as neighboring San Juan County did recently. Signs are clearly posted in Silverton about the requirement, the town obtained grant funding to provide masks and hand sanitizer to businesses, and shops have posted signs notifying visitors of the requirement.
“I think that the police should be on the sidewalks patrolling and enforcing it just like the no-smoking laws,” Craig said.
She pointed to recent closures of businesses in states like Texas and Florida, where reopening plans have been reversed due to rising cases, and said a mandatory mask order would help businesses here stay open, avoiding further financial impact if visitors bring the virus with them from other places with higher infection rates.
“We need to be ready to protect ourselves and to protect the tourists who come to our town thinking it’s a safe place,” she said.
“I would like to see a city ordinance requiring it,” said City Councilor Peggy Lindsey, who cited numerous calls and complaints from constituents about people, particularly visitors from other states, not wearing masks in businesses. “I’m not saying that I don’t want us to have a good tourist season; I’m just saying if we all protected ourselves and our shop owners a little bit, I think it would just be better.”
Others argue an ordinance will protect the community as a whole from possible outbreaks, which could force stricter regulations to shut down the economy again.
Exstrum said not having a community-wide rule in place puts her in a more difficult position to enforce the recommendation in her own store.
“It’s hard as a shop owner to try to do the right thing with no city backup,” she said, adding she wishes the city would adopt an ordinance so the onus isn’t on the business owners and the expectations are consistent.
Regardless of what officials decide, she said she’ll continue requesting shoppers wear masks in her shop because it’s what the CDC recommends and she knows many of her customers feel safer when others wear them.
“You’re more at risk of losing business by not having masks,” she said.
Chief Wood believes a city-wide mask mandate would be unconstitutional. When asked about other jurisdictions that have already implemented that regulation, including Silverton, he said, “Let’s see what happens.”
“The last thing we need is to have a bunch of lawsuits,” Wood said.
Funk said clearer communication is needed between businesses and law enforcement about when incidents with customers should result in calling police.
“I think there’s a lot of confusion, and none of the businesses know quite what to do and when to get law enforcement involved,” Funk said.
He said he’s heard business owners aren’t sure when a situation with a customer over a mask or other policy escalates to the point of calling police, or if they should call 911 or a non-emergency number.
Funk is supportive of wearing masks, and said he’d like to see more people choosing to wear them voluntarily, without needing enforcement; he declined to weigh in on a possible ordinance.
“You’re not required to do it, but we should all be nice to each other,” he said.
Wood said he’s worried about the enforcement creating tension between tourists and locals.
“I’m concerned that the continued push for the mask — it is voluntary, in the end — it could be creating division,” Wood said.
TENSION BETWEEN TOURISTS AND LOCALS
Others say that tension already exists, pointing to the recent incidents involving shop workers who have had pushback from those who argue with them about wearing face coverings in stores requiring them.
While few store owners and employees said they’d seen evidence of the tension in person, it has spilled over in local Facebook groups.
One local hotel owner wrote in a Facebook group post that customers from outside the state were told to “go back to Texas,” and Jeff Lindberg, owner of Colorado West Jeep Rentals, said “go home tourists” was written in dust on the back of one of his Jeeps. That’s happened before, and it wasn’t serious enough to report or raise concern about, he said.
Others have posted suggesting locals-only shopping hours, due to concerns about visitors from states with higher rates of infection, like Texas, Arizona and California.
Tamara Gulde, co-owner of Mountain Fever Shirts and Gifts, said she’s wary of making tourists feel unwelcome, given the local economy’s reliance on visitors for business. The same shops struggling with mask compliance from visitors were lamenting lodging restrictions preventing their stays. They’ve felt the effects of the Fourth of July celebrations being canceled this year due to concerns over community spread of the virus. There’s a balance between encouraging visitors to come and also asking them to use protocols to prevent virus spread.
“Texans are feeding us,” Gulde joked, noting that recent Facebook arguments about visitors could be undermining past efforts to draw people and business to the city.
Bruce Gulde agreed but said people visiting and not following precautions "are going to end up loving us to death."
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