Mayor Stephanie Scott is back in Haines after a week-long stay at Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital, but will be heading to Seattle within the next month for more medical tests.
Scott was medevaced to Juneau Sept. 5 after contracting pneumonia. Doctors soon discovered other medical problems, including fluid in Scott’s lungs, but couldn’t determine the source of the maladies.
Doctors discharged Scott Sept. 13, but said she will need to go to Seattle soon to have more tests performed. She will also need to see a cardiologist and pulmonologist to determine whether a problem with her right ventricle is to blame.
“They can’t determine what is actually causing the problem, whether it’s heart, lung or autoimmune,” Scott said in an interview Tuesday.
Scott said she will either travel to Seattle during the last week of September or after Oct. 8 to avoid missing another assembly meeting.
“The doctor said, ‘You need to go to Seattle for these tests,’ and I said, ‘I’m not missing another meeting. You should see what happened (when I wasn’t there),’” Scott said.
At the Sept. 10 meeting, which Scott missed, planning commission chair Rob Goldberg succeeded in convincing the assembly to reconsider a previously rejected ordinance which would add “yurts” to the code’s definition of temporary use dwellings.
The assembly also amended an ordinance which would change runoff election procedures when candidates receive less than 40 percent of the vote. The amendment changed how “40 percent” would be mathematically calculated: Under the change, votes cast would be calculated according to the number of voters voting.
Scott said she will veto both ordinances if it comes down to it. She said the “yurt ordinance” would pass “over her dead body.”
“I don’t believe that if you put the word ‘yurt’ in there that 20 years from now someone with a yurt will not be hassled. There’s no reason to specifically name a yurt. It will cause a problem. I’m into not causing problems,” Scott said.
Scott went in to her office for an hour Monday, but couldn’t muster the energy to go in Tuesday. “It was the first time probably in my life where I haven’t been running a 140 degree fever and decided not to go in,” she said.
Scott said she intended to be back in the office Wednesday.