Vaccine Mandates Will Not Be Required For Saline's Public Employees

Public employees in the Saline area will not be facing a mandate to either get vaccinated or tested to fight Coronavirus pandemic. The Sun Times News has contacted leadership in the City of Saline, York Township, Saline Area Schools, Lodi Township and Pittsfield Township. None of the leadership said that their staff would need to be vaccinated or get regularly tested in order to be allowed to report to work.

“An internal city mandate is not something being discussed currently but to be fair, anything that can markedly benefit the health, safety, and welfare of citizens and staff remains on the table at this point. We will be watching state and federal agencies for best practice standards to follow heading into the fall and winter season,” Saline City Manager Colleen O’Toole said in an emailed statement.

The practice of requiring public officials to either get vaccinated or submit to regular testing has come to the forefront nationally, especially since President Joe Biden made this a requirement for all federal employees recently.

States like California are requiring state employees to do one or the other as a condition of their employment, as are companies like Facebook, Google, Morgan Stanley and Tyson Foods before they are allowed to return to work in person.

This will not be done for any public employee in the greater Saline area, however.

“At this time, we are not planning to mandate the vaccine for our staff,” Saline Area Schools Superintendent Steve Laatsch said in an email.

Washtenaw County has seen its Coronavirus hospitalization numbers take a nosedive since April, but has ticked back up recently according to Adam Paberzs, a member of the Washtenaw County Health Department’s vaccine outreach team. Paberzs said that the vast majority of people hospitalized with Covid-19 are unvaccinated.