Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 63
Alderman Clemons
Ok! understand that | guess to a degree. | guess | am going to ask Attorney Bolton, is that true that the
business owner would ultimately be responsible for the fine?
Attorney Bolton
Well to use the Chief's example, if Brandon serves an underaged person, Brandonis responsible for that,
he can pay a fine. The owner may also be subject to loss of the Liquor License, it’s not necessarily one or
the other. | believe ...
Alderman Clemons
Pm talking about the Mask Ordinance.
Attorney Bolton
May | continue?
Alderman Clemons
Yes.
Attorney Bolton
If you read Section 16 it defines “business” and it defines “owner” and it is very expansive. In Section 11 it
makes the business and the employee potential defendants because it says, “no business and no
employee of any business shall provide goods or services etc”. So if you’ve got a situation where the
owner is ordering the employees to break the law, all of them could be cited. | think what would happen if
that were the case, is the Police would use their discretion and whatever action was taken would be taken
against the owner. Nowif the owner, as far as we can determine, as far as the Police can determine, is
telling his employees “enforce the mask ordinance” well not “enforce” but follow it, obey it, make sure the
customers who come in are adhering to it. The owner is saying that to the employee and some employee
takes it upon himself to ignore the Ordinance and it becomes known that hey, if you go in there on
Thursday afternoon, Joe is working, he doesn’t care about the mask ordinance. Well perhaps, if there are
enough complaints by people, the Police will take a look at Joe and if he’s the only miscreant, he’s the one
who will be summonsed. But there’s a lot of discretion built into this and just for that purpose so that the
appropriate person can be the one who is summonsed to Court.
Alderman Clemons
Ok thank you for the explanation, | appreciate that.
President Wilshire
Alderwoman Kelly?
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you, ve taken notes and changed my notes and trying to keep up with the conversation here, | think
it's been very productive. | want to make the point that we have our Police Chief here and he is asking us
to simply to allow for some mechanism of enforcement. He’s also telling us that he’s going to use fair
judgement when he engages with our community; whether it’s issuing warnings, working with those people
and we know that’s how our Police Department generally operates. So | hear people’s concerns here but |
also know that this is a Public Health Issue, something that we have heard from our experts over and over
