Board of Aldermen 06-22-2021 Page 10
Alderman Jette
Thank you Madam President. So! don’t want to do anything to derail this. | think Alderman Lopez's desire to
increase the number of people on the Board of Health it sounds like a great idea. He as liaison has seen them
in action and knows the problems and is trying to solve the problem. The problem | have is that | guess
because of the way the Statute is written, we are supposed to first determine that this is necessary.
It probably is but we ran into the same problem with the Police Commission Charter change. We were asked
to vote that night when the thing was first presented to us without any discussion, without any debate. We
were asked to determine that it was necessary so that it could go to the public hearing. | don’t know...| think
afterwards — | may be wrong about this so | won’t say that because | don’t want to say anything that I’m not
sure of. | don’t know what the solution is but | understand Alderman Lu’s reluctance to vote, to make a
determination that this is necessary when we haven’t had a chance to discuss it. | don’t want to derail it so
given Attorney Bolton’s instruction or suggestion that if we don’t determine its necessary tonight and it doesn’t
go on to public hearing, then we run into scheduling problems so | will vote in favor of this but | don’t know if in
the future whether we need to look at that language.
| guess if Attorney Bolton is saying that’s wnat the Statute says but | think that if we had more time, | suppose
what he’s saying is that if we had more time then it could be referred to committee and the committee could
make a recommendation as to whether it’s necessary or not and should go on to the public, and come back to
us for that vote, and then we schedule the public hearing. Once again we are through no — I'm not blaming
anyone for this — but once again we're facing deadlines thatrequire us to do anything...| don’t think this is
anything really controversial about this. | think if we vote tonight saying it’s necessary, it goes on to public
hearing. There will be plenty of time to discuss it then. The committee will then discuss it and | think there’s
plenty of room to tweak it or abandon itif that’s appropriate. I'll vote for it tonight but | understand Alderman
Lu’s reluctance to vote on this. Thank you for letting me think out loud.
President Wilshire
Sure.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| just have a question. So when | look at the next motion down there, it says this is going to go to
Personnel/Administrative so it goes there before it would go to a public hearing? Just trying to get clarity for
myself. Would it go to public hearing first?
President Wilshire
It's the same night.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Oh okay. All right.
President Wilshire
Okay. You allset? Anyone else? Anyone on Zoom?
Alderman Lopez
Just as an observation, yeah it’s pretty cumbersome that you have the public hearing on it and then the
committee meeting at the same time but there is public comment at the committee meeting and also at the
Board of Aldermen. So if any significant red flags were raised, then | think there would still be public input but |
have not changed very much here.
