LITTLE ROCK, Ark — The City of Little Rock has a mask mandate that was enacted by Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. on Friday. It only affects indoor public spaces owned by the city.
The mayor also strongly encouraged all Little Rock businesses to follow suit.
A private business has the right to enforce or not enforce their own mask mandates.
"Every time I'm out here there's somebody that doesn't want to put their masks on," said Abbi Siler, the owner of Abbi's Teas and Things in Hillcrest.
Inside her shop they have a tea room where they serve different types of tea along with sandwiches. But she's moved all of her business operations outside since the delta variant started to spike in Arkansas.
"I'm actually really grateful for it. I think it was a really brave thing for our mayor to do. So having a mask mandate takes a little bit of pressure off me as a business owner asking people to put on a mask," said Siler.
She said every business has a different dynamic. For her, her only employees are family members which gives her the flexibility with mask mandates.
"Other businesses have full brick and mortars and a whole staff that they have to worry about especially with the unemployment back and forth, but I certainly hope that other business owners will ask people and employees to put their masks on," said Siler.
Lia Glent is the manager and co-owner of WordsWorth Books & Co., a local book store. She said she hasn't had any push back with customers on the COVID-19 restrictions.
"We support the mayor on this. We think it's very important to follow CDC guidelines which we're doing and we're requiring masks in the store even though all our staff are vaccinated. We believe most of our customers are," said Glent.
She said a lot of children under 12 who are ineligible for the vaccine come in. She and her staff want to keep them protected.
Glent said she closed at one point at the beginning of the pandemic when schools closed for spring break back in 2020.
When Governor Asa Hutchinson gave the okay for businesses to open back up again, the book store re-opened in May with regular COVID-19 restrictions; masks, social distancing and curb side pick up.
We reached out to other private businesses who didn't want to enforce mask mandates for their customers. A few said they didn't want to deal with enacting the COVID-19 restrictions, and instead want to give customers and employees their own options of choosing to mask up or not.
Little Rock's mask mandate is effective until August 31.