Board of Aldermen 7-14-2020 Page 36
But he was kind enough to invite me to participate in this year’s celebration as a Army Veteran from the
Vietnam Era. He invited me to make some remarks to my fellow veterans and | appreciated that.
And | wanted to thank Attorney Bolton. You know when we passed the mask ordinance we did so at the
request of the Board of Health, our Department of Health. And all of this information about the masks, you
know, the conflicting information that people are exposed to, you now, our Board of Health which | want to
remind the public are very qualified people, there are medical doctors, there’s a pulmonologist, in infectious
disease specialist, an epidemiologist and Director Bagley is a Doctor of Public Health. So these are people
who are much better equipped to analyze all of the information regarding the safety of our public and we
relied on their advice. And at that meeting, | remember asking Attorney Bolton about all of the objections
that we were receiving from the public about whether this was legal for us to do. And | remember he gave
me a very long and well-reasoned explanation as to “yes” it is very much within our authority to do that.
When | read the decision by Judge Colburn it is although she copied exactly what Attorney Bolton told us.
So he was right on. The advice we got from the Public Health Department and the advice we got from our
City Attorney was right on and thank you both to the Public Health Department and the Legal Department.
Thank you.
Alderman Cleaver
Yes, thank you Madam President. Just very briefly regarding the unfortunate events in downtown, the
racist rant or whatever you want to call it. | strongly support WSMN and | hope other people do too with
messages of support. But also to Morin’s Landscaping and their employees. | strongly suggested that
everybody give them a call and say how much they are appreciated and how unfortunate the community
believes it was. So thank you very much.
President Wilshire
You’re welcome; anyone else? | just had a couple things. | wanted to also acknowledge my condolences to
the Patno and Moquin families. Although the Patno young man was much younger, it is still tough. | mean
it’s really tough to lose a family member. And to the Moquin family my condolences.
| have to also thank Latha Mangipudi and Pagma Kunapareddy for continuing to make the masks. | think
they just continue to be shining stars in our community. And | am also very proud of our City for the
reaction to the incident on Main Street. People stepped up, they did the right thing and we are all proud of
everyone who was involved that stepped in and stepped up and did the right thing; really proud of everyone
in this City.
Also | just wanted to mention that | believe in my 21 years on the Board of Aldermen, that our City’s Legal
Team is one of the best. They are just wonderful and we’ve always had a wonderful Legal Team. But right
now | think we have a really, really good Legal Term led by Attorney Bolton but Attorney Clarke and
Attorney Leonard, very, very capable, very responsive. Well done Attorney Bolton and your selection of
good people.
Committee announcements:
Alderman O’Brien
Madam President, just to remind everybody on Wednesday, July 22™ at 7:00 p.m. via our friendly format
Zoom, there will be a Committee of Infrastructure Meeting. Everybody is welcome to join us; they are lots of
fun. Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
Yes on Thursday, the 23™ at 7:00 p.m. we will have a Zoom meeting of the Joint Special School Building
Committee.
