The Owner of Bad Tattoo Brewery was named businessperson of the year by the Penticton Chamber of Commerce, sparking outrage as the brewery initially defied public health orders.
In September, Lee Agur vowed that the brewery would not enforce B.C.’s vaccine mandate. Weeks later, the brewery apologized and said that they would now be following public health orders and Agur would be stepping down from management “for a while.”
The Penticton Chamber of Commerce issued a press release on Monday to explain their decision-making process.
The Chamber says that judges brought forward their recommendation for the award, prior to the vaccine mandate.
The judges then revisited their decision after the public health order was put in place and Agur made his announcement.
“We expected that there might be controversy with regards to the selection, so we gave the judges in this category an option to revise their decision,” said Penticton Chamber of Commerce executive director Diane Kereluk, in a statement.
“After much discussion, the judges decided to stay with their decision based on all the research and discussions they had with the finalists.”
Chamber president Jonathan McGraw added “the committee felt that we needed to uphold the integrity of the independent judging process and not undermine it by overruling a decision.”
According to the statement, judges review all the nominations, researching each one, including reviewing websites, social media and reviews. Finalists are then interviewed before a decision is made.
“It was felt that we need to show tolerance when a fellow business leader makes a mistake. To allow one mistake, which was corrected by Mr. Agur, to overshadow all the significant contributions he made during the year for our community would not be compassionate and caring,” McGraw said.
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