Board of Aldermen 5-26-2020 Page 19
Alderman Caron
| do too.
President Wilshire
Ok.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you, Madam Chairman. | simply wanted to offer to my the Ward 6, | actually thought that this was
being held last weekend and I, if | had Known that | had time to go out and speak with people, | would
definitely got some feedback and reached out to people because my concern with this, the broadness of the
Ordinance, is we have all kinds of neighborhoods that could be subjected to just unforeseen noise. | don’t
see the time duration, the duration of this was a limitation in the Ordinance. My understanding is that’s what
Bishop Guertin wants in this particular instance, but you know, what if they were longer? So | just wanted to
speak an apology to Ward 6 that | didn’t reach out to discuss this with them. Thank you.
Alderman Lopez
So | really like the intent behind this for Bishop Guertin, | think this is a very difficult time for children who are
graduating and that they deserve something special, to recognize their accomplishments to give them that
sense of community that they get from graduating and that transition from this to you are graduating, you
have accomplished something and the community recognized it. So | am in favor of letting Bishop Guertin
launch their fireworks but like the Alderman that spoke before me, | don’t see that this is a good idea to lump
that one-time situation, which | think should be special. It should be unique; it should be Bishop Guertin’s
idea and their effort. Into a broader change in Ordnance that we can’t fully vet, we need to do this in a timely
manner to that Bishop Guertin can enact it, but at the same time, we have a Citywide change. So my
question to Attorney Bolton is if we amend this Ordinance to be specific to the problem before us which is
Bishop Guertin....
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez, can | interrupt you for a second? Whoever just joined the meeting, can you please mute
yourself. Thank you, sorry Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
That’s ok, if we amended this so that is specific to Bishop Guertin, do we have to reintroduce the Legislation
completely in order to get it to the Committee or does somehow passing that restrict what we can propose to
the Board of Aldermen?
Attorney Bolton
| don’t think that’s the problem. | think the problem is that if you pass Legislation it allows the Roman
Catholic Organization to do something while keeping in place a restriction against any other religion doing
that or any other ethnic group or civic organization or social club or for-profit organization, | think you run
into a serious discrimination on the basis of suspect class.
Alderman Lopez
That makes sense. So in your opinion, if we amended the Ordinance to make each application subject to
Aldermanic Approval for now and then maybe went back at this at a separate time and said, let’s appoint a
specific committee like the Special Events Committee to vet these and approve them with an Aldermanic
