Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 9/22/2020 - P60
Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 60
Alderman Tencza
Thank you, Madam President. | think largely this new amendment to the mask ordinance does a good job,
clarifies things. | appreciate the language that was presented last night and tonight about presenting a
note if folks are able to do that and need to do that. My main concern still is shifting some liability back on
to businesses to not necessarily enforce this but just to making that call and putting themselves in that
position. | think | fear Alderman Schmidt’s concern about how the Police are going to be involved. | know
last night at the Committee Hearing Attorney Bolton outlined and Alderman Dowd outlined it a little bit
tonight. All really the busines is required to do is bring this issue up with the customer and then alert the
Police if they are not compliant. Then the Police essentially issue that person a trespass notice which
could lead to a second trespass notice which could lead to criminal charges. | know it’s a little maybe
farfetched, but maybe not if folks are shopping at places that they don’t have access to go other places as
well. So because of that | won’t be supporting this tonight but | think it’s a step in the right direction.
President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you. |am going to support it but | do share the aforementioned concerns. | too have strong
concerns with a young lady all 110 pounds of her who is working as a Clerk and trying to stop somebody
coming into their business, particularly a guy that’s going after his second six pack of the evening and
telling him he’s got to wear a mask where he isn’t. So | see we have Chief Carignan here and | think to
allay, | would like to hear NPD’s opinion at this particular time on wnat they intend to do in those particular
type of situations to help out the shop owners who will be basically putting them in the front lines with this.
So with your indulgence, Madam President.
President Wilshire
Chief, do you care to weigh in?
Police Chief Carignan
Sure thank you very much. I’ve been listening to this argument for quite a while now and | respect each of
the sides. Alderwoman Schmidt, | will say that the scenario you painted happens frequently. | was at
Whole Foods this weekend and | saw a 16/1 7-year-old girl try to tella person that the store policy was to
have a mask. He walked right by her and told her he wasn’t putting a mask on. She had to struggle to go
get amanager. So it’s really difficult to put them in that situation. | will say without the Legislation that puts
the accountability on the businesses, it makes our job very, very difficult to enforce it. So | think with the
Legislation it would allow us to be able to go into a store and say, hey, tell them they are not allowed to be
in the store without a mask and if you do that and they continue to come to the store, call us, we will come
and enforce it.
There’s no expectation that any 16-year-old or 17-year-old or any store employee has the responsibility to
enforce that mask Ordinance. They should call us that’s wnat we are there for. If there comes a time when
the call volume is so high that we can’t get there in time, well that’s part of prioritization that we do all the
time. So we would make every effort to go and enforce it and supportthose businesses. We are not
looking to penalize businesses. But! will say that we’ve had a couple that we get repeat constantcalls on.
There are at least three businesses that we were talking about today that’s just always on-going and they
don’t care. They are in complete defiance of the Mask Ordinance. So we need the Legislation to help us
support enforcement, to put the responsibility on the businesses but at the same time we don’t want the
businesses to have to suffer the enforcementissue. And I'll answer any questions.
