Sarandon Raboin  0:00  
Rural Arizona mayors can implement mask mandates in their towns to help stop the spread of COVID-19 in their communities after Governor Doug Ducey gave them the ability on June 17. But the question that mayors were grappling with is will the residents comply with the ordinances? 

Greg Mengarelli  0:15  
Everybody knows, hopefully knows, their city or town or county well enough to know what do you do to get as much compliance as possible? 

Sarandon Raboin  0:25  
Across Arizona, the mayors of 57 cities have issued some type of mask mandate. Some rural mayors issue mask mandates because they understand that the pandemic isn't limited to metropolitan areas. 

Jen Miles  0:37  
You might say, well, your rates aren't as high. Maybe our positivity rate isn't as high, though I think it has now. It's certainly really high in Mojave county and our death rate is higher than the state average. 

Sarandon Raboin  0:48  
Others didn't mandate because they didn't think it would have the desired outcome.

Greg Mengarelli  0:52  
I felt like mandating would have then created another whole set of problems knowing that our people are very independent and love their individual freedoms.

Sarandon Raboin  1:03  
Part of the reason that rural mayor's want to limit the spread of COVID-19 as much as possible, is because small towns aren't getting the same medical resources as metro areas.

David Smith  1:13  
The testing availabilities in Bisbee are dismal, to say the least. Our people have to literally drive to Tucson to make an appointment to get a test. I feel pretty strongly that the rural communities of Arizona being left out of this.

Sarandon Raboin  1:30  
Testing isn't the only disparity that rural areas are facing. Mask policies at Arizona's 15 counties are not always the same as the cities within them.

Jen Miles  1:39  
It causes confusion in local areas, especially like Mojave where, when you have a county level of government that says, 'we're not going to do that,' and the cities all say, 'we are going to do that,' you have a conflict there.

Sarandon Raboin  1:54  
To help remedy the situation. several counties have stepped up the education around masks. 

Kim Musselman  1:59  
We have a campaign that we have launched that specifically is to address and help educate our communities. And that campaign is "Face it - Masks Save Lives," and we really believe that that is true, and so we're really working hard to get our communities all on board. 

Sarandon Raboin  2:20  
Regardless of whether they issued a mask mandate or not, all three of these mayors strongly recommend wearing a mask when social distancing is not possible. Reporting for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and the Luce Foundation, I'm Sarandon Raboin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai