Board of Aldermen 6-09-2020 Page 31
Alderwoman Lu
Ok and to that idea | would like to offer to, there are letters that were not included in the public comment.
And | wonder if | could have 5 minutes to read one of them?
President Wilshire
That’s up to the Board? | mean if we start reading one, do we read all 50? Do we read 5, do we read 6, |
mean where do we cut the line?
Alderwoman Lu
Well | think it’s a serious consideration that we should give to allowing the residents to speak
contemporaneously, it doesn’t seem outside of the realm of possibilities. But thank you.
Alderman Dowd
Yes, this is something that we probably shouldn't try to decide tonight. This should go to a Committee;
somebody should bring it up and it should come up at Committee and then come back to the Full Board.
The other thing is when we are doing Public Hearings, we are limited, because we have no idea when we
are on-line like that how many people are out there. In order to get the meeting concluded at a
reasonable hour, we only allow 5 minutes. And to me, if somebody has a comment on something we are
talking about, 5 minutes is more than enough time to address their opinion. We have some people that
want to speak for an extended period of time. | would not be in favor or allowing that nor reading long
letters into the Agenda.
The other thing is that if we allow one letter to be read, it is not fair to anybody else that submitted a letter
to not read theirs. So we will be starting something that we would have an issue with. So | think that this
needs to go to a Committee. Somebody has to bring it up and talk about it at the Committee level, not at
the Full Board level right now.
Alderman Laws
| would have used different words probably but | was going to say exactly what Alderman Dowd said. So |
don’t need to speak. Thank you.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you and | appreciate everyone’s comments on this, | am taking this up, | would say that | find it a
little frustrating that in order to revoke the right to speak, we didn’t send it to Committee, but in order to put
it back in, we'd like to send it to Committee and draw it out. So | would like to see us, your original
response was, Let’s talk to IT and see what we can do. | don’t know why we need to complicate this.
People should be able to have a say in what we are doing and COVID is no longer an excuse to keep that
from happening.
Alderman Lopez
| would just suggest as Alderman Dowd said, | can see the concern, | have letters that | would like to read
too and | know that if we read one letter than we are going to get a lot of e-mails about why didn’t you read
this e-mail and why didn’t you read this letter? One of the reasons that we enacted this system in the first
place is so that the letters could be presented in their formal and official and exacting way. And also in a
reasonably expedient manner. That being said, | think each Alderman has a comment period where they
can make a brief public comment.
