Throughout the entire contentious and emotional community discussion around whether Waitsfield should join Warren and Fayston in adopting a townwide mask mandate, local business owner Troy Kingsbury has walked the fine line between keeping his business open and keeping his customers and employees safe.
After the board’s first vote to reject a mask mandate on June 13, Kingsbury, the owner of the Village Grocery in Waitsfield, was subject to scurrilous postings on a digital community bulletin board. Curation on such community forums is often lacking and/or poor. That debate as well as commentary on the mask issue raged on for way too long before the topic was shut down.
Throughout the days of discussion, Kingsbury did what he generally does, remained optimistic, upbeat, open to talking to people about the issue and willing to engage.
Then this week, after another contentious meeting of the Waitsfield Select Board at which three board members again rejected a mask mandate, Kingsbury did what he always does. He put community first and came up with the idea of creating a community mask station at the front of his store.
Clean masks are hanging in Ziploc bags for people to pick up and use when entering the store, along with some disposable flip flops for those who might have forgotten their shoes or left them at the river while coming for a creemee.
There’s a Sharpie nearby so that people can label their Ziplock bag with their name and hang it back up for future use.
How this works in the long run has yet to be seen. In many ways, it’s not so much the execution of the community mask station that matters –other businesses are also providing masks and gloves for patrons. What matters is the fact that – once again -- Kingsbury is putting community first. While some of Waitsfield’s elected leaders can’t get out of their own way on this issue, Kingsbury is carrying on in his own well-known fashion.
When leaders won’t lead, others have to do what they can to fill the void.
